The Orchard Keeper (Vintage International) (Paperback)

Staff Reviews
The Orchard Keeper is the first novel by one of America’s finest, most celebrated novelists. Set in a small, remote community in rural Tennessee in the years between the two world wars, McCarthy tells the story of John Wesley Rattner, a young boy, and Marion Sylder, an outlaw and bootlegger who, unbeknownst to either of them, has killed the boy’s father. Together with Rattner’s Uncle Ather, who belongs to a former age in his communion with nature and his stoic independence, they enact a drama that seems born of the land itself. And, as time changes all things, an era has been removed from earth when John Wesley returns later in life and the village has been changed by time:
"They are gone now. Fled, banished in death or exile, lost, undone. Over the land sun and wind still move to burn and sway the trees, the grasses. No avatar, no scion, no vestige of that people remains. On the lips of the strange race that now dwells there their names are myth, legend, dust." The precision of language is what makes McCarthy one of the great American authors.
Description
The first novel from one of America's most celebrated novelists, the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Road. Set is a remote community in rural Tennessee in the years between the two world wars, it is the story of a young boy and a bootlegger who, unbeknownst to either of them, has killed the boy's father.
The boy, John Wesley Rattner, and the outlaw, Marion Sylder–together with Rattner's Uncle Ather, who belongs to a former age in his communion with nature and his stoic independence–enact a drama that seems born of the land itself. All three are heroes of an intense and compelling celebration of values lost to time and industrialization.
About the Author
Born in Rhode Island in 1933 but raised and educated in Tennesee, Cormac McCarthy is the author of a dozen previous novels and the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Praise For…
"McCarthy has a voice that is unmistakably his own ... with a passion most writers couldn't muster or wouldn't dare." —The Boston Globe