The Orchard: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries)

Price: $18.00 - $16.78
(as of Jan 17, 2026 02:55:18 UTC – Details)

Peter Heller’s masterful coming-of-age tale, the story of a mother and daughter living on a Vermont apple orchard, escaping ghosts of the past.

Hayley and her seven-year-old daughter, Frith, live in a rustic cabin with no electricity in the foothills of Vermont’s Green Mountains. A renowned translator of Tang dynasty poetry, Hayley walked away from her career and her addict husband to raise Frith alone in a land populated not by ambition-fueled academics but by hawks, beavers, and other wild things—including their exuberant Bernese Mountain dog, Bear. They get by on what little they earn from their overgrown apple orchard and the syrup they make from their maple trees. Frith— precocious, homeschooled, and a voracious reader—considers herself queen of this backwoods paradise. She is too young to understand the pain and regret that have followed her mother here.

Season after season, it is the three of them—mother, daughter, and dog—until the spring day when Rose Lattimore appears at their door and upends Hayley and Frith’s solitary existence. When tragedy unexpectedly strikes, Frith must come to terms with heartbreak for the very first time. By turns joyful and searing, The Orchard reminds us that, even during the hardest of times, the enduring power of nature, love, and friendship will prevail.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0F9V8CPVG
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage
Publication date ‏ : ‎ December 2, 2025
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8217008445
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.15 x 0.74 x 8 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #30,662 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #270 in Coming of Age Fiction (Books) #288 in Family Life Fiction (Books) #1,101 in Literary Fiction (Books)
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