Ohio’s Black Swamp is inhospitable to humans, animals, crops and trees alike, and at the opening of the novel in 1838, the Goodenough family have been battling for nine years to grow the requisite 50 trees that will secure their claim to their land.

From internationally bestselling author Tracy Chevalier, a riveting drama of a pioneer family on the American frontier. The hard life of starting from nothing, learning of the dysfunctional family dynamics, discovering Johnny Appleseed on a whole new level, and the apple Orchard itself (I felt a part of the descriptive surroundings quite often).

James is a gentle grower of apple trees; Sadie, harder-edged, is a maker of cider and drinks far too much of it. We follow him as he makes his way across America in the mid 1800's, and eventually to California where he becomes a gold miner and finally a tree man like his father. He is the son who will learn, travel, work a variety of jobs, make acquaintances, truly fall in love and in the end, settle in a most unexpected place with his own family. Her second novel, Girl with a Pearl Earring, won the Barnes and Noble Discover Award, sold 4 million copies worldwide, and was made into a film starring Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson.

I also liked that Johnny Appleseed is a side character that seems to be slightly amused by Sadie and her antics to win him over.My thanks to Penguin Viking and Net Galley for providing a digital copy of this novel for review purposes. The Goodenough family have moved to the Black Swamp, with the hope that they can establish an orchard of apples. Molly, who appears in the second half of the novel brings a welcome and refreshing, even uplifting boost to this novel. It is here in this section on Robert that I got a sense of the history that Chevalier skillfully depicts .

The setting and characters are vividly portrayed, even if they are not likable and left me horrified at times. Chevalier has carved out a middle-point between writing literary fiction and its page-turning, commerical counterpart and this book will serve both those audiences. Worn down by grief and hard living, she's become a bitter, backstabbing woman who's more than willing to cut off her nose to spite her face, and destroy everything her husband values.When I read the Acknowledgements, I found that Lobb and Veitch are real people and that there are real places and events that took place in California and England. It is also, in part, a very American tale showing how a nation grew from the blood, sweat and tears of individual settlers; the farmers and gold miners, the whores, gamblers, visionaries and commercial risk takers.

The novel starts out with alternating chapters of a husband and wife , having settled in Black Swamp, Ohio traveling west from Connecticut when they could go no further through the mud.In this rich, powerful story, Tracy Chevalier is at her imaginative best, bringing to life the urge to wrestle with our roots, however deep and tangled they may be. I kept reading and thinking it couldn't possibly get worse between these two, and then something more would pop up as James and Sadie told their story in alternating POVs. The first part was too long to feel like an introduction, but too short to feel like an equal part of the book. John and Sadie transfer from Connecticut; John's hope is that he can support his family with his apple orchard.