The Orchard

Books

"Like Mark Twain and Toni Morrison, Peter Heller has a rare talent that hooks both literary and commercial readers." -Elle magazine From the bestselling author of The Dog Stars and The River, The Orchard is an unforgettable coming of age tale reminding us that, even during the hardest of times, love, friendship, and the enduring power of nature will prevail. Hayley and her seven-year-old daughter, Frith, live in a rustic cabin with no electricity in the foothills of Vermont's Green Mountains. One of the world's most renowned translators of poetry from China's Tang dynasty, Hayley walked away from her career and her drug-addicted husband to raise Frith alone in a land populated not by ambition-fueled academics but by hawks, beavers, and other wild things-including their exuberant Bernese mountain mutt, Bear. They get by on what little they earn from their overgrown apple orchard and the syrup they make from their maple trees. Frith-precocious, homeschooled, and a voracious reader-considers herself queen of ...