Hayley and her daughter, Frith, live in a cabin in Vermont’s Green Mountains to hide out from Frith’s father, a Louisiana boatman and dangerous addict. Hayley, who has left the life of an academic, translates Chinese poetry. Seven-year-old Frith, named for “The Snow Goose,” sits atop her Bernese mountain dog, Bear, the Queen of the Vikings, as she surveys her kingdom of hawks and woodland animals. A gold cardboard crow rests on her head.
Suddenly, there is a flash of color, and Rose emerges from the trees. “Requesting permission to speak to the queen,” she says.
Frith is charmed. She considers the meeting with Rose to be the third chapter of her life. The first is being born, the second, moving to the mountains.
These are the characters who make up Peter Heller’s “The Orchard.” It’s a charming, gentle book and something of a departure for the Denver author of mysteries, such as the Edgar-nominated “The River.” But he is a superb writer, and he pulls it off.
Hayley and the precocious Frith are a loving duo. To make money, they gather apples in their orchard and collect maple syrup from their trees. Hayley spends much of her day translating, while the home-schooled Frith roams her domain. Life is simple. A wood-burning stove heats the cabin; water’s hauled from a well; and there is no indoor plumbing. But neither mother nor daughter believe themselves to be deprived.
Denver author Peter Heller. (John Burcham, provided by Peter Heller)
When Rose enters their lives, she brings color and excitement. Frith is fascinated by the game of horseshoes, played by a drug-dealing biker gang living nearby. Rose suggests Frith learn to play and provides her with horseshoes and stakes. After practicing for weeks, Frith takes on one of the gang members. The result is one of the more delightful scenes in “The Orchard.”
Rose broadens the existence of Hayley and Frith. A weaver and creator of what she calls “possible horrible sculptures,” she tells Hayley a frightening story of two brothers and two sisters who once lived in the area. Frith overhears it. “I felt grown up just then. I think I sensed that the story was some sort of rite of passage. Maybe Rose was giving us, as a kind of gift, a moral tale that she knew I would chew over for the rest of my life,” Frith thinks. “I’ve wondered to this day if she knew I was listening.”
Frith tells the story from the advantage of adulthood. A college professor by then, she is unmarried and pregnant and believes the baby will be a girl. Her situation is uncannily like that of her mother. Does she have Hayley’s strength or even her own from those childhood days? “How did Frith the Nordic Queen, who took no prisoners, become such a wimp when it came to love?” she asks herself.
Heller’s love of the outdoors is clear in “The Orchard,” just as it was in a previous novel, “The River,” set in northern Canada. This time the setting is Vermont, where Heller attended high school, and is filled with lush woodland scenes. Heller is a master in writing about wild places, about the hawks and the beavers and the changing of the seasons. Reading “The Orchard” is an escape into a world of beauty and love and friendship. And the unexpected challenges of life.
The Orchard
Author: Peter Heller
Pages: 256
Publisher: Vintage Books
Sandra Dallas is a Denver-based author and book reviewer.
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