Author : Helen Humphreys Screen Reader : Supported Works with : Source : Status : Available | Last checked: 3 Hour ago! Size : 44,968 KB |
Readers of H Is for Hawk and The Frozen Thames will be captivated by The Ghost Orchard, award-winning author Helen Humphreys’s fascinating journey into the secret history of an iconic food. Delving deep into the storied past of the apple in North America, Humphreys explores the intricate link between agriculture, settlement and human relationships. With her signature insight and exquisite prose, she brings light to such varied topics as how the apple first came across the Atlantic Ocean with a relatively unknown Quaker woman long before the more famed “Johnny Appleseed”; how bountiful indigenous orchards were targeted to be taken over or eradicated by white settlers and their armies; how the 17,000 varietals of apple once cultivated on this continent were catalogued by watercolour artists from the USDA’s Division of Pomology; how apples wove into the life and poetry of Robert Frost; and how Humphreys’s own curiosity was piqued by the White Winter Pearmain, believed to be the world’s best tasting apple, which she found growing beside an abandoned cottage not far from her home.
In telling this hidden history, Humphreys writes movingly about the experience of her research, something she undertook as one of her closest friends was dying. The result is a book that is both personal and universal, combining engaging storytelling, historical detail and deep emotional insight.
HELEN HUMPHREYS’s most recent novel, The Evening Chorus, was nominated for a Governor General’s Literary Award and was a national bestseller. Her critically acclaimed memoir, Nocturne, was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award. Previous novels include Coventry, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, a Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year and a finalist for the Trillium Book Award; Afterimage, which won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize; Leaving Earth, which won the Toronto Book Award; and The Lost Garden, which was a Canada Reads selection. The recipient of the Harbourfront Festival Prize for literary excellence, Humphreys lives in Kingston, Ontario.