Bookworm, issue 1

The Book: The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin

On a remote, expansive orchard in the Pacific Northwest lives a solitary, self-sufficient orchardist named Talmadge. His quiet life tending apple and apricot trees is upended when he discovers two scared, desperate and dirty, very pregnant girls in the orchard. Talmadge feeds the girls and a fragile rapport forms. The delicate nature of this relationship inspires our pairing with a wine made from an aromatic and refined grape. It’s beautiful floral and fruit aromas place us gently amidst the orchard trees, but as the story develops, we’ll see that this peacefulness does not hold.

Shortly after the girls give birth, a man tracks them to the orchard and attempts to take them away. The tragedy that transpires that afternoon shapes Talmadge’s and the girls’ lives in ways that are both grief- and wonder-filled as the story unfolds.

Amanda Coplin’s gorgeously detailed novel of the American West and the people who populate it at the turn of the 20th century reveals majestic beauty and extreme suffering, kindness and cruelty. It’s this tension between contradictory forces, woven throughout the book, that keeps the reader enthralled. We experience grief and hope, revenge and acceptance, casualness and ceremony, anger and silence, joy and fear, uncertainty and decisiveness, the urge to stay or to flee. Coplin writes, “The sorrow came from those two feelings – the happiness of company, the anxiety of interrupted solitude…When one is young, [Talmadge] thought, one thinks one will never know oneself. But the knowledge comes later; if not all, then some. An important amount.” Coplin’s characters embody the complexity of being human, and it’s what makes them so captivating.

Other than Talmadge, the book’s primary protagonists are strong, independent, focused women who make their way in a man’s world. There is Talmadge’s longtime-friend Caroline Middey, an herbalist and midwife who lives alone in town; and Della, one of the two girls, who learns to wrangle wild horses and to rely on no one but herself. Della’s niece, thoughtful and intelligent and competent Angelene, comes of age caring for the homestead, the orchard and eventually Talmadge. Talmadge supports and admires these women, on one hand, but he also struggles to listen to them and wants to shelter them from the outside world – a world they are clearly capable of taking on without him.

Readers will find respite from some of the book’s unsettling content in Coplin’s descriptions of the natural world. Wild horses captured in the mountains are impressive because of their “unhandledness.” Mountains rise “like gods,” rivers are “kingly,” and the night sky “is the color of new plums.” Encountering a meadow filled with wildflowers and insects causes Talmadge to wonder if he is dead, or is this heaven? And the autumn air in the orchard is “piercingly golden” having “something of the trees’ inner life about it.” In his old age and nearing death, Talmadge thinks of teenage Angelene; “She was the dream of the place that bore her, and she did not even know it.”

There is a sense of deliberateness here, as if the words we are reading are the most important things in that moment. Coplin’s sentences ask us to linger, to pay attention. For example, Coplin describes Talmadge’s feelings of anxiety on a train ride: “He had moved slowly all his life. He was used to seeing things drawn out of themselves by temperature and light, not by hard action…But this was something different. This was how people lived now.” Even when writing about an everyday activity such as riding a train, Coplin is working to heighten our understanding of the characters and their struggles.

And so, while the story progresses methodically, and almost without fanfare, it is undoubtably a page-turner. It’s carefully constructed on the push and pull of conflict, that foreshadows, but does not quite reveal, what might happen next. It’s a quietly gripping story – expansive, yet spartan, suspenseful, yet calmly poetic – filled with characters and a landscape that deliver a truly transportive reading experience.

The Wine: Eroica (Chateau Ste. Michelle & Dr. Loosen Estate), 2020, Columbia Valley Riesling, $20.99

This wine is pale gold. It has medium intensity on the nose with youthful aromas of fresh apricot, tart green apple, pear, lemon and grapefruit, blossom, jasmine, wet stones and honey.

It is an off-dry wine with the slightest hint of residual sugar, which balances the high acidity. On the palate is has medium flavor intensity consistent with the aromas on the nose, most notably apricot, pear, white grapefruit and honey. The wine is medium bodied with medium alcohol, 12% ABV, and it has a medium (+) finish.

This Riesling is balanced and complex, bright and fruity; and the high acidity is offset with a touch of sweetness. Sipping it brings to mind a pleasant, sunny spring day – it is absolutely delightful.

Why the pairing works:

The Orchardist is set in Washington state, where the climate and soil east of the Cascade Mountains are perfect for growing grapes. Unlike the coastal region near Seattle, eastern Washington has long, warm summer days to help grapes ripen, but cool nights so that the grapes retain acidity. The grapes in Eroica Riesling are grown in the Columbia Valley, not far from where The Orchardist takes place.

Riesling grows well in cool climates with long growing seasons where its sugars and flavors concentrate slowly. It’s ripening parallels our novel’s development – gradually and deliberately each beautiful sentence building upon the previous.

The novel’s protagonist Talmadge grows apples and apricots, and Eroica Riesling exhibits similar fruit flavors on the nose and palate – think about stone fruits, green fruit like apples and pears, and citrus. While sipping, imagine Talmadge or Angelene, content in their solitude, walking through the orchard as aromas of white blossom hang in the air. And the wine’s bright acidity provides a counterpoint, to help balance some of the more unsettling moments in the novel.

Ultimately, it’s clear that the words in the book and the grapes in the wine have been handled with care and that both the author and winemaker have produced works of refinement and beauty.