The Orchard: A Memoir [Hardcover]

I don't read memoirs, biographies, autobiographies. I don't find real life to be all that interesting. But since Theresa Weir has been a friend of mine for almost a decade now, and since I love her Anne Frasier books, I had to read this one. I never expected to review it, as I also don't review books. I went into thinking I'd learn a thing or two I might not have heard before, probably laugh a few times and enjoy the story. I didn't expect to not be able to put it down, I mean, it's real life after all and I already know this woman. I laughed, I sighed, I got that feeling in my chest where you feel as if you can't breathe, and I cried. A few times.

Theresa was a young city girl working in her uncle's bar when she meets the sexy farm boy Adrian. After what will be described as a whirlwind romance, they are married and living on his family's apple farm. I feel as if maybe the whirlwind romance part is neither, but more the typical behavior of a girl who grew up as Theresa did...we catch bits and pieces of that too. As an outsider to this farming world, Theresa is shunned by Adrian's family and basically isolated on the property. When you read of the dinners alone, your heart will break. You will curse her mother in law, want to shake Adrian, and want to tell Theresa to
pack her things and hit the road.

Theresa surprises the reader by staying married to Adrian and living in this hostile environment and raising two children. She comes to deal with the fact that his family will never accept her, and will only accept the children if they tow the line and follow the way of the family thinking. She and Adrian work together to fight off the moths that could ruin the apple crop, and Theresa is very concerned about the effects chemicals could have upon them. Pesticide use is prevalent from the opening pages of the book when we read how salesmen used to drink the pesticides to show they were safe. The poisons are always looming in the background of the story.

I won't go any further with details about the book because I do not want to spoil it for the reader. This book will make you think. This book will make you think twice about the apple you pick up in the grocery store. It will make you see that dysfunction exists everywhere, and that people can still maintain and survive. This is a story of life, love and family, and it's not a fairy tale.

"Sometimes there are people you must forget because of the damage--blood ties or not." Theresa Weir describes her mother here, but could just as easily be referring to her vicious mother-in-law or one of the many men in the parade of her mother's unreliable, dishonest boyfriends. A luminous, tender memoir, The Orchard unfolds gradually, revealing a harsh, sometimes harrowing, childhood and an unlikely marriage between a stoic Iowa farm boy and a rudderless, rootless girl.

Weir's upbringing made her an unlikely candidate for the role of farm wife. Raised by an impulsive and self-absorbed single mother, she spent much of her early life wandering from place to place. In a typical move, Weir's mother follows a man across the country to Albuquerque, borrowing gas money from her six-year-old daughter. Upon arrival, she places a phone call to the man's home from a public telephone and dissolves into hysterics while the children watch from the car. The man is not divorcing, after all. She should have called ahead.

The turning point in Weir's life appears in black slacks and white shirt, walking into her uncle's bar for a beer. Youthful and handsome, Adrian Curtis immediately attracts the barmaid's attention. Much to her surprise, he returns her interest, and begins their brief courtship with a late-night horse ride. The young couple spends every spare moment together. Everyone around them disapproves. Propelled by youth, stubborn will, and infatuation, they are quickly married. At first, it's disastrous, and early on it appears the marriage won't last.

Woven throughout Weir's personal story, there is another, larger story of the backbreaking work, and the sacrifice of body and soul that go into maintaining a family farm across generations. In subtle ways, the original intent of the farm serving the family can be distorted with the passage and changing of times. The orchard is oblivious to its caretakers. Inside the farm, there are relentless chores morning and night, erratic weather, and the menacing specter of increasingly dangerous chemical wars against nature. Outside the farm, life marches on relentless and transient. "The passage of time is ephemeral. You wrap it up and put it in that place where memories go. And when you pull it out it doesn't matter if it's one year or eighteen. It feels the same."

While telling Weir's particular story, The Orchard illustrates the inherent importance of women directing their own lives, not only for themselves, but for the sake of their loved ones. When tragedy highlights the dangers posed to her children if they remain on the farm, Weir seizes control and embarks upon a path that changes her family's future entirely. "Fear makes you brave," Weir says in explanation. Perhaps. Or perhaps that fearlessness and strength lie within each of us, waiting until need coaxes it to the surface. It is a touching bit of truth: mothers often find strength for their children they could never uncover only for themselves. Sometimes there are people and places you must leave behind rather than suffer the inevitable damage.

by Kim Cox
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

It is hard to believe that a USA Today bestselling author of nineteen novels had difficulty finding a publisher for her memoir. Theresa Weir, who has published award-winning suspense, romance, thriller and paranormal books under her name and the pseudonym Anne Frasier, persisted. Three years later, The Orchard was published. Her gift to us is a riveting, honest memoir.

At age twenty-one, Theresa fell in love with Adrian Curtis, an apple farmer, whose family waged a battle to keep their orchard trees free from moths. She never anticipated being shunned by his family or the bleakness of farm life. The environmental implications of pesticide use in the story are chilling. Although the issues raised are disturbing, the writing is fluid. Weir expertly weaves a sense of foreboding through the rows of apple trees the Curtis family vow to protect.

The book jacket leads us to believe the story is that of saving a fifth-generation apple farm. The author's note, however, is very telling. The book is a catharsis. Sometimes the only way to purge oneself of a poison is to write about it.

Grand Central Publishing graciously supplied the advanced readers copy for my unbiased opinion.
Reviewed by Holly Weiss, author of Crestmont