Nevermore: Peach Keeper, Florence of Arabia, Overstory, At the Edge of the Orchard, Hand to Mouth, Poisonwood Bible

Reported by Kristin

The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen provided a much-needed light, summery read for one of our Nevermore readers this week. Willa Jackson and Paxton Osgood have known each other for years, having grown up in the same small town although not necessarily running in the same social circles. When Paxton buys and restores the old Jackson family home in order to open an inn, history rises to the present in the form of a skeleton found beneath a peach tree. Allen weaves stories together from generation to generation, creating a captivating atmosphere of friendship.

Following with more fiction, another reader thoroughly enjoyed Florence of Arabia by Christopher Buckley. Clearly satire, this novel approaches Arab-American relations with a level of irreverence sure to enchant and/or offend its readers. In the country of “Wasabia,” a junior diplomat decides to try to fix the injustices of the Middle East by granting full citizenship and rights to women. Our reader found some references to other countries very obvious and some rather subtle, and altogether funny.

In somewhat more serious fiction, our next reader described The Overstory by Richard Powers, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, as an awesome book. Beautifully written, this novel examines the natural world through a series of connected stories. As nine different characters are moving through their separate lives, they each discover a connection to trees. Our reader was enthralled by the relationships between the people and trees, and how the manner in which trees live, grow, and even communicate with each other mirrors the interdependency necessary for human survival.

At the Edge of the Orchard by Tracy Chevalier is a frontier story, with James and Sadie Goodenough settling in Ohio in 1838. Their son Robert escapes his difficult family by moving westward with the California Gold Rush. Trees popped up here again (as you might guess from the title,) as the characters were involved in shipping saplings and seedlings from the West Coast to England. Our reader said that it was a very enjoyable book about starting anew.

The discussion then turned to non-fiction with Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America by Linda Tirado. This is a real working poor memoir by a woman who details her struggles of maintaining multiple jobs while struggling to keep her family above water. Our reader felt that this was a perspective not usually seen, and that the author had done a good job of raising her children to learn for themselves and to be curious in life. Much discussion ensued, with various readers weighing in with their opinions on how the author had included a running commentary on how important cigarettes were to help her get through another long walk to work or to steal even a moment of

relaxation.

Lastly, another reader admitted that she was still in the middle of but still enjoying The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. This epic tale is spun from the perspective of a Baptist missionary’s wife. Nathan Price is dispatched to the Belgian Congo in 1959 along with his wife and their four daughters. Our reader’s main comment thus far was the fact that the wife sees how terribly her husband treats his family, but she still believes in his mission.

The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen

 Reviewed by Ambrea

Willa Jackson has spent much of her life in Walls of Water, North Carolina, living down her family’s reputation of genteel poverty.  She works at a sporting goods store downtown with her friend, Rachel, who has the distinction of being a coffee connoisseur, and she lives a simple life with very little mystery or adventure (much to her chagrin).  But with the resurrection of the Blue Ridge Madam, a sprawling mansion built by Willa’s great-great-grandfather during the town’s heyday, and the grisly discovery of a skeleton on the property, Willa must face her family history head-on if she wants to banish the ghosts that have haunted her family for generations.  Together with Paxton Osgood, a do-gooder socialite of the very prominent Osgood family, Willa will uncover strange and terrifying secrets about Walls of Water—and forge unshakable bonds of friendship.

I loved listening to The Peach Keeper.  It reminded me a great deal of Garden Spells and The Girl Who Chased the Moon, but it has its own unique characters—although a few familiar faces do make an appearance—and its own unique story.  It has much the same flavor of Sarah Addison Allen’s other novels:  a quirky southern town, small hints of magic, complex mother-daughter relationships, and a deep sense of family and tradition that influences many of the thoughts, feelings, and actions of characters.

Like Allen’s previous novels, The Peach Keeper is weighty with history.  Specifically, it focuses on the turbulent past of the Jackson and Osgood families—and, more importantly, the unshakable bond held by Willa and Paxton’s grandmothers, Georgie and Agatha—as they clashed throughout the history of Walls of Water.  It’s a complex story with finely detailed characters, deep family roots, and subtle hints of magic that paint a rich tapestry of loss and love.

I enjoyed the way Allen beautifully describes the Appalachian Mountains.  In Garden Spells, The Sugar Queen, and The Girl Who Chased the Moon, readers are introduced to the mountains of southern Appalachia and have the opportunity to get a taste of the region.  However, in The Peach Keeper, I was able to get an even better glimpse of the Blue Ridge Mountains and it’s a beautiful sight to behold.  Since I’m familiar with the Blue Ridge Mountains and the surrounding region, I was inordinately pleased by Allen’s descriptions of the mountains and her fictional town, Walls of Water.  It’s a breathtaking location that feels right at home in the mountains I love, and I was incredibly excited by her reference to landmarks I knew and descriptions I recognized.

It was unexpectedly thrilling.

I also enjoyed the characters.  It’s wonderful to see Willa and Paxton’s relationship develop, to see a reflection of their grandmother’s relationship in their newly budding friendship.  I thought it was interesting to see how their lives unfolded and intertwined.  Moreover, I enjoyed seeing how they handled the separate romantic interests that crop up in their lives.  Love and excitement is the last thing Willa is looking for with Colin, and Paxton is struggling to keep the status quo steady between herself and her best friend, Sebastian.  Their relationships are complicated—Will trying to live down her past, Paxton trying to preserve her dearest friendship and escape her mother’s shadow—but it’s refreshing to see them confront their dilemmas head-on, to see them work through the everyday struggles of their lives to see their own self-worth.

Truthfully, I enjoyed watching them grow, figure things out, fall in love—and just live their lives.  It’s almost sickly sweet, I have to admit, but it’s all worth it for the feeling that everything worked out all right in the end.

However, I will note that The Peach Keeper feels a little darker than Allen’s other novels.  I mean, sure, Julian is a particularly terrifying villain in The Sugar Queen and domestic abuse is front and center in Garden Spells, but most of Allen’s stories feel lighter,  like you know that things will all work out in the end.  The Peach Keeper, on the other hand, has a darker undertone to it that influences much of the novel and makes it, in my opinion, a more serious novel.  Although it begins with Georgie and Agatha’s ordeal in 1936, the pall of their respective terror and remorse doesn’t really dissipate.  The violence feels fresh, more palpable, more pervasive, especially with the ghost of Tucker Devlin hanging over the story, which gives it a much different feeling than Allen’s other works.

Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen

Reviewed by Jeanne

Walls of Water, North Carolina is a former logging town, now known for its many waterfalls. It’s the kind of place that most people pick up and leave after graduation or else they stay forever in the same place their parents and grandparents lived. Long ago, the Jacksons were the most prosperous family in town; then hard times hit, and daughter Georgie ended up working as a maid. Now the wealthy Osgoods have decided to renovate the old Jackson family mansion known as the Blue Ridge Madam into a bed and breakfast, quite literally digging up old secrets and a body in the process.

Willa Jackson, Georgie’s granddaughter, has come back to Walls of Water after leaving in such a spectacular fashion that it cost her father his teaching job. She’s running a sporting goods store with a coffee bar run by Rachel, who says she can read people by their coffee orders. Paxton Osgood, the woman behind the renovations, is the wealthy daughter still trying to break free of her mother. She’s made it as far as her parents’ guest house. She’s desperately and probably hopelessly in love with Sebastian, the former classmate she once saw kissing another boy in a mall. Her twin brother, Colin, has indeed made his escape from Walls of Water and is working as a landscape engineer. It’s his idea to transplant a giant live oak tree onto the grounds of the Blue Ridge Madam in place of an old peach tree, inadvertently uncovering a human skeleton.

As William Faulkner once said, “The past is never dead. It isn’t even past.” All the characters in Peach Keeper are trying to either break with or come to terms with their pasts so they can move on. Willa and Paxton in particular discover how their families’ pasts are more deeply intertwined than they ever knew, with the repercussions lasting to the present.

This is Sarah Addison Allen’s fourth book. I’ve come to expect certain things from her:

1. A small town North Carolina setting, a bit off the beaten path, where you have a real sense of the people and the place. It feels homey, and the pace is a bit slower. There are little shops and diners, not mega-stores and fast food restaurants.

2. Food imagery. Not the sort in which the author pauses to give you a recipe every few pages and not descriptions to make you stop and raid the fridge, but descriptions that do appeal to the senses, like mixing cold mild and flour, a pinch of cinnamon and hint of vanilla, the smell of spices or the tang of barbecue.

3. Romance is in the air, even if people aren’t looking for it or it seems hopeless. Sometimes people you think should end up together at the start aren’t the ones who end up together in the last chapter, but that’s okay too. Double check! This time romance is one of the main themes, more overtly so than in some of the other books and a lot of fun to watch unfold.

4. Strong family ties, for good or ill. Characters are a product of their ancestors and their place. Some embrace that, some rebel, but they do make their own choices.

5. Characters I like. You’d think that would be a given, but there are a lot of books in which I find I would like to tell a character to shut up or grow up or, even better, do both. Allen’s characters tend to be people I know or would like to know-- with a few exceptions.

6. Strong female friendships that offer comfort and support. This is another main theme of this book, creating such friendships and seeing them in action. There is an old unexpected bond, too, one that makes a rather unsympathetic character suddenly much more understandable and admirable.

7. A whiff of magic. Not the eye of newt, cauldron bubble sort of magic, but just a little shimmer of something otherworldly, a touch of superstition mixed in with the everyday world. This time there’s a bit more with superstition, with birds fluttering at windows and pennies to draw ghosts away. There’s also a folklore motif about a traveling man that I found very satisfying.

8. At the end of the book I’ll feel happy and satisfied as if I’d eaten some lovely treat from the Blackbird Bakery except that I won’t fear the scales.

In short, Peach Keeper is a lovely summer read: sweet but not overly so, with a bit of a tang and as satisfying as the first peach of summer. Enjoy!