![]() ![]() This is the third novel of hers that I have read, the other two being ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ and ‘Remarkable Creatures’. I have found that Tracy Chevalier excels in character-driven story telling in her fiction. It is a bit of a surprise for me to see her taking on the primitive rough simple lives of the early American pioneers. ‘Orchard’ is a novel of the American frontier which takes places in the 1830s and 1840s and 1850s mostly in Ohio and California. I was a bit behind the times with Chevalier as I still saw her as an author of European novels like her ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ which is about Dutch painter Johannes Van Meer and the girl in his famous painting. ![]() That fact alone makes ‘Orchard’ an inherently more interesting novel. ‘At the Edge of the Orchard’ by Tracy Chevalier is refreshing in that one of its main female characters is unexpectedly truly nasty and vile in many ways. This is particularly true of frontier novels where the family is already up against the harsh natural elements. ![]() The women are all too often depicted as wooden paragons of virtue. One of the mistakes that too many novelists make is to have all their choice villain roles filled by males. ‘At the Edge of the Orchard’ by Tracy Chevalier (2016) – 285 pages ![]()
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