The Orchard

“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.”—Denver Post“This gentle, moving story is an elegy to the narrator’s mother and her mom’s rural Vermont childhood and beautiful Chinese poetry translations. The voice Heller creates is so real, you’ll keep forgetting it’s not a memoir, and the lovely ‘ancient poetry’—all Heller’s own—is masterful. —Marion Winik, People “Contemplative and emotionally layered….Ideal for readers who love Liz Strout, Claire Keegan, or intimate, place-driven fiction. I finished it feeling hushed, like I’d walked through someone else’s memory and needed a moment to just sit with it.” —Victoria Wood, Bibliolifestyle“This discreet monument of American literature reaches its point of incandescence.” —Le Point (France)”[A] moving novel….Where [The Orchard] excels is in evoking a sense of revisiting the past and noticing the things that both were and were not said….The novel is nominally intimate in scope, featuring only a handful of characters, but it also reckons with big ideas and impossible questions. A powerful look at interpersonal bonds, familial and otherwise.”—Kirkus (starred review)“Heller brings the setting to life with lyrical prose and delivers an emotionally charged, heart-wrenching conclusion. Readers are in for a treat.”—Publishers Weekly

Peter Heller is the national best-selling author of Burn, The Last Ranger, The Guide, The River, Celine, The Painter, and The Dog Stars. The Painter was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and won the prestigious Reading the West Book Award, and The Dog Stars has been published in twenty-six languages to date. Heller is also the author of four nonfiction books, including Kook- What Surfing Taught Me About Love, Life, and Catching the Perfect Wave, which was awarded the National Outdoor Book Award for Outdoor Literature. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in poetry and fiction, and he lives in Denver, Colorado.