The Orchard Keeper [B0632]

1993 PB first Vintage International edition of the 1965 original, in nice clean condition. The acclaimed debut novel from one of America's most celebrated novelists, the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Road. Set in 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.

From recent mixed Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "Very encouraged to read a lot of McCarthy going forward. This book is great, it's short, the dialogue is 10/10 well written. Tense and interesting story, highly immersive environment."; "I found McCarthys debut novel a little difficult at times. His beautiful descriptions of nature and landscape always get me salivating but here I felt they pushed the plot a little far off in the horizon.

I enjoyed the three main characters, broken damaged males interacting in a different and difficult world - I thought it was a clever invention to use the dawn, day and dusk age gaps between them pushing them apart but pulling them together."; "At times you have no idea what's going on, but the narration and text is so captivating you keep reading anyway. Magic."