The orchardist : a novel / Amanda Coplin.

Coplin's compelling, well-crafted debut tracks the growing obsession of orchardist William Talmadge, who has lived at the foothills of the Cascade Mountains since the summer of 1857, when he was nine. A loner shaped by the land he loves, Talmadge has carefully tended his orchard for nearly 50 years. His only real confidante is Caroline Middey, an herbalist, midwife, and natural healer. His orderly life is altered forever when two runaway girls, Jane and Della, arrive at the edge of his orchard, dirty, starving, and pregnant. A tragedy leaves Talmadge caring for Jane's baby, Angelene. Della has no interest in childcare or boring fruit picking and soon takes off with the horse wranglers who visit Talmadge's field every spring. Talmadge cannot accept Della's desire to leave the orchard, which in his mind strangely parallels the disappearance of his sister Elsbeth when they were children. Still tortured by Elsbeth's unexplained disappearance, he attempts to help Della in a way he couldn't help his sister, but this obsession leads Talmadge into increasingly dark terrain.