At the Edge of the Orchard

From international bestselling author Tracy Chevalier, an ambitious American novel of a pioneer family and a westward push that extends over three generations and across a continent

The Goodenough family have left nineteenth-century New England to settle in the swamps of western Ohio, bringing with them branches of a favorite apple tree. But the orchard they plant sows the seeds of a long battle between James and Sadie Goodenough over what to do with the fruit, revealing irreconcilable differences in character. The escalation of this war resonates through their children and forces the youngest, Robert Goodenough, to make an agonizing choice that haunts him as he runs away, grows up, and moves ever farther west. Only among the redwoods and sequoias of goldrush-era California does he find solace and, eventually, answers.

Moving back and forth between Ohio and California and anchored by two real-life tree men—legendary Johnny Appleseed and the English plant collector William Lobb—this epic novel chronicles the implosion of a pioneer family and the shock waves it sends through the generations and across America.


From the Hardcover edition.