Recommended Reads: Set in Wenatchee Valley, ‘The Orchardist’ full of dramatic twists and turns

The Orchardist, by Amanda Coplin

This is a novel with soul. As in life, the many dramatic twists and turns will surprise you. Patience, persistence, and hopefulness are demonstrated by characters facing all that life reveals in the early part of the 20th century. We witness hopelessness shatter a person’s spirit. The author writes with empathy about how hope needs to be nurtured and fostered. It’s hope that sustains people. The action in this novel drives reclusive individuals together into a supportive family circle. The characters are shaped by their losses, their family, and their environment. They celebrate life’s joys and persevere through life’s hard times.

The book is set in the Wenatchee Valley with principle character William Talmadge. Great change will come over the horizon with trains and roads, and for Talmadge also with two sisters who travel on foot. Talmadge is the picture of patience and persistence through adversity. His apple orchard is an oasis in the middle of a harsh land. Tending it takes, and also develops, all his talents and energy. The lone harmony of this ordered life grows with meaning when his life collides with the two girls, who are pregnant and abused. He opens his heart and extends compassion to them in their desperate circumstances. What develops demonstrates how a person can plant seeds of hope, then nurture hope through compassion and determination every day to transform unremarkable lives and redeem damaged souls.

The girls are sisters, Della and Jane, and they have survived unspeakable cruelty and misfortune. Two very different personalities, the story follows the thread of their lives, woven with Talmadge’s, through their deliveries, and the subsequent generation. Talmadge has two good friends, the herbalist Caroline Middey and the Indian horse catcher Clee, who share in critical parts of the life forged by Talmadge. Each person’s past will catch up with them, Talmadge, the girls, and others, and the choices people make when confronted with their history reveal their character.

The author grew up in the fruit-growing Wenatchee Valley, surrounded by her grandfather’s orchards. This incredible first novel, eight years in the writing, was inspired by her family history. It goes back to the time of bushel baskets lugged into town by mule-drawn wagon, when Seattle and Tacoma were mere villages, and when train travel became the new-tech way to go. Dwayne Eugene Sanders married Coplin’s grandmother when Coplin was 3 years old. A model for Talmadge, Sanders was in his 40s, a lifelong bachelor and an orchardist who lived in Monitor, Wash. He grew apples and cherries on a few acres and helped his brothers with their mother’s orchard, and worked the graveyard shift at the Alcoa plant. He died in 1994. “He was very gentle and he was very quiet,” says Amanda Coplin. “I think there are a lot of people from that era who are like that. He was nice to the women in my family. You could tell that there was a really strong mutual respect. And he was really funny. He was kind of a prankster.”

Amanda Coplin declared that the setting is fundamental to understanding a story an author is telling. “When I say ‘place’ I mean the landscape but also the culture and the time period,” she said.  Her writing is influenced by Toni Morrison, John Steinbeck, and William Faulkner.

This weekend I took advantage of living so close to Wenatchee, and went hiking at the Pinnacles State Park overlooking the orchards of the Wenatchee Valley.  I witnessed firsthand the rugged, unforgiving brown terrain, with sage brush and dust. The orchards that cross the valley create a patchwork of green oasis and show a lushness, which was once hidden. I overlooked the river running through the valley. In 1900 Wenatchee had 451 residents. In 2012 there were 32,400 residents. Despite the time that has gone by and the changes it’s brought, I looked out over the landscape and could easily imagine Clee and his horsemen, thundering wildly through the terrain. I could imagine the relief of the terrified sisters, stumbling into the orchard and experiencing a glimmer of hope for their lives. I could sense a comfort from the backdrop of seasonal rhythms of the countryside – this weekend, the penetrating heat of summer reflecting off the enormous rocks and hardened dirt trails, with thankfully a breeze at times. Rickety wooden ladders leaned against fruit trees waiting to be climbed by pickers, and huge crates were stacked and waiting to be filled and delivered to market.

Thereby hangs a tale . . . .

— Story and photo by Wendy Kendall

Wendy Kendall is a writer, project manager, wedding officiant and volunteer at the Edmonds Library. She’s enjoyed living in Edmonds for over 20 years.