Hard Cider

At age fifty-four, Abbie Rose decides its time to follow her long-held dream: to produce hard apple cider on the Leelanau Peninsula in Michigan where her family has vacationed for over twenty years.

Situated on Lake Michigan's sand dunes, the family cottage had been their escape from the high-pressure life of Ann Arbor, Michigan where Abbie taught and her husband Steve had a law practice. With a windfall of money, Abbie has purchased a farmhouse and outbuildings and is ready to learn the skills needed--business and professional--to create a quality product.

Abbie's dream is not Steve's dream. He not only has no interest in her plan, he thinks it is a bad decision. He likes Ann Arbor life.

Their marriage has been challenged before. First, battling infertility and through failed treatments and in-vitro fertilization and grappling with the decision of surrogacy vs. adoption. And secondly, when their house burned down right after Abbie finally gave birth to a son after adopting two other boys.

As Abbie forges ahead with her plans, living Up North while Steve stays in the city, her attention is further divided by her boys' personal problems and challenges. Then a young woman, Julia, arrives in Northport whose secret will bring further turmoil and tension in Abbie's life and marriage.

Barbara Stark-Nemon's novel Hard Cider has a distinct Michigan flavor, reflecting her life in Ann Arbor and Northport.

Apples from the trees in my backyard

Michigan ranks as the second or third state in apple production and has more farm and fruit stands than any other state.

And where there are apples, there is apple cider!

Hard Apple Cider is a leader in the craft brew industry, especially in Michigan. Michigan is already fifth in the nation for its number of breweries, microbreweries, and brewpubs.

So, Steve's objections aside, Abbie is onto something. And she needs the challenge and she needs to at least try and make her lifetime dream come true.

Readers who are not interested in Michigan and our apples will find their interest perk up when Julia comes on the scene. Abbie must juggle the needs of her sons and husband and the secret she discovers while holding fast to her dream.

Fans of women's fiction will enjoy Hard Cider.

Oh, and there is knitting.

I received a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Hard Cider: A Novel
by Barbara Stark-Nemon
She Writes Press
Pub Date 18 Sep 2018
PRICE $16.95 (USD)
ISBN 9781631524752

*****

My one complaint is: Abbie, you must be CRAZY to love to walk along the Lake Michigan beach in WINTER. I did that for ten minutes ONCE in October and that was brutal! At least in winter, perhaps you don't get sand in your nose.

Lake Michigan at Pentwater during Hurricane Sandy

Winter in Pentwater is not for the faint-hearted. Which is why we only lasted one winter...

The bars were at least open.

We had to dig the mailbox out every day.

Perhaps Abbie benefited because Northport is on the 'sunrise side' of the Leelanau Peninsula...and protected from the Lake Michigan gales that assaulted our house.

So, I'll give Abbie the benefit of doubt regarding her sanity for leaving Ann Arbor to go Up North in winter.

Except.. the driving on the west side of Michigan downstate can also be brutal...

Christmas Day, 2013 driving from Lake Michigan to Grand Rapids...

Apple Wars: At the Edge of the Orchard by Tracy Chevalier

Tracy Chevalier is best known for her first historical fiction book The Girl With the Pearl Earring which imagines the subject of Vermeer's painting of the same name. I have read all of her books since.

Her new novel At the Edge of the Orchard includes historical figures Johnny 'Appleseed' Chapman  and William Lobb who collected seeds and seedlings for export to England. But its focus is on the Goodenough family's tumultuous history and battles over what kind of apples to grow.

The story begins in the Black Swamp of Ohio, just outside of Perrysburg, where James and Sadie Goodenough are trying to establish a homestead in mud and amongst mosquitoes. They left Connecticut to find land, traveling west until the good roads ended in the swamp.

James has brought his beloved Golden Pippin apple seeds, a legacy brought by his ancestor from England to Connecticut where his father raised apple trees. The apple's flavor recalls James home, a sweet apple with a sharpness and a finish of pineapple. To keep one's land claim James must have an orchard of 34 trees. He sets the goal higher to fifty.


James prefers the good eating Golden Pippin apples, but his wife Sarah has become dependent on the Apple Jack made from the sour 'spitter' apples. After years living in isolated wilderness, losing her children to the annual fever, and regretting her marriage to James instead of his brother Charlie, Sadie is bitter and angry. Only the Apple Jack offers respite.

A family tragedy drives the Goodenough son Robert to leave home, heading west. He becomes an eternal wanderer, alone and separate, but writing an annual letter home to the siblings he left behind. Robert's journey ends at the Pacific Ocean where he discovers the giant Sequoia trees and William Lobb, an English seed agent. Robert finds work collecting Sequoia seedlings for Lobb.

This Sequoia stump appears in At The Edge of the Orchard.
http://www.monumentaltrees.com/en/trees/giantsequoia/california/

Robert is enigmatic, a living ghost cut off from society and unsure of what 'family' really means. He makes few choices, just goes with where life leads him. Reaching the limits of America he finds himself going back East for the first time, to end up where his family began.

This novel begins with the Goodenoughs, jumps to a series of letters from Robert, to rejoining Robert in the West. The early section is violent and full of action, the characters powerfully drawn. The second part is quiet and internal. Robert is so shut down and uncommunicative that he almost fades from his own story, allowing stronger personalities to shine. There is no resolution to his story, but movement towards a possible new beginning brings hope.

Following the Goodenoughs is a badly used nine-patch quilt, with fabrics holding memories of home. But it is a home life Robert escaped from, at the behest of his mother, a hard life with a family at war. The quilt is torn and repaired, but makes the bedding for the next generation.

And that is perhaps what life is all about, each generation taking the tattered remnants of whatever good they can glean and use it to endeavor to cushion and ease the way for the generation to come.

I received an ARC through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Hear an interview with the author at NPR here.

At the Edge of the Orchard
Tracy Chevalier
Penguin
Publication Date March 15, 2016
hard cover $27.00
ISBN 9780525953005