0
    • Elementary Secondary Higher Ed Common Reads
    0 0
    Download high-resolution image Look inside
    Listen to a clip from the audiobook
    audio pause button
    0:00
    0:00

    The Orchard

    A Novel

    Part of Vintage Contemporaries

    Author Peter Heller
    Look inside
    Listen to a clip from the audiobook
    audio pause button
    0:00
    0:00
    Large Print
    $20.00 US
    Diversified | Random House Large Print
    6.08"W x 9.17"H x 0.82"D  
    On sale Dec 02, 2025 | 320 Pages | 9798217287871
    Grades 9-12
    Add to cart Add to list Exam Copies

    See Additional Formats
    Peter Heller’s masterful coming-of-age tale, the story of a mother and daughter living on a Vermont apple orchard, escaping ghosts of the past.

    Hayley and her seven-year-old daughter, Frith, live in a rustic cabin with no electricity in the foothills of Vermont’s Green Mountains. A renowned translator of Tang dynasty poetry, Hayley walked away from her career and her addict husband to raise Frith alone in a land populated not by ambition-fueled academics but by hawks, beavers, and other wild things—including their exuberant Bernese Mountain dog, Bear. They get by on what little they earn from their overgrown apple orchard and the syrup they make from their maple trees. Frith— precocious, homeschooled, and a voracious reader—considers herself queen of this backwoods paradise. She is too young to understand the pain and regret that have followed her mother here.

    Season after season, it is the three of them—mother, daughter, and dog—until the spring day when Rose Lattimore appears at their door and upends Hayley and Frith’s solitary existence. When tragedy unexpectedly strikes, Frith must come to terms with heartbreak for the very first time. By turns joyful and searing, The Orchard reminds us that, even during the hardest of times, the enduring power of nature, love, and friendship will prevail.
    © John Burcham
    PETER HELLER is the best-selling author of The Guide, The River, Celine, The Painter, and The Dog Stars, which has been published in twenty-two languages. Heller is also the author of four nonfiction books, including Kook: What Surfing Taught Me About Love, Life, and Catching the Perfect Wave, which was awarded the National Outdoor Book Award. He holds an MFA in poetry and fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and lives in Denver, Colorado. View titles by Peter Heller
    "Heller is a master in writing about wild places, about the hawks and the beavers and the changing of the seasons. Reading The Orchard is an escape into a world of beauty and love and friendship—and the unexpected challenges of life."
    —Denver Post

    "This gentle, moving story is an elegy to the narrator’s mother and her mom's rural Vermont childhood and beautiful Chinese poetry translations. The voice Heller creates is so real, you’ll keep forgetting it’s not a memoir, and the lovely 'ancient poetry'—all Heller’s own—is masterful.
    —Marion Winik, People

    "Contemplative and emotionally layered....Ideal for readers who love Liz Strout, Claire Keegan, or intimate, place-driven fiction. I finished it feeling hushed, like I’d walked through someone else’s memory and needed a moment to just sit with it."
    —Victoria Wood, Bibliolifestyle

    “This discreet monument of American literature reaches its point of incandescence.”
    —Le Point     (France)

    "[A] moving novel....Where [The Orchard] excels is in evoking a sense of revisiting the past and noticing the things that both were and were not said....The novel is nominally intimate in scope, featuring only a handful of characters, but it also reckons with big ideas and impossible questions. A powerful look at interpersonal bonds, familial and otherwise."
    —Kirkus (starred review)

    "Heller brings the setting to life with lyrical prose and delivers an emotionally charged, heart-wrenching conclusion. Readers are in for a treat.”
    —Publishers Weekly

    About

    Peter Heller’s masterful coming-of-age tale, the story of a mother and daughter living on a Vermont apple orchard, escaping ghosts of the past.

    Hayley and her seven-year-old daughter, Frith, live in a rustic cabin with no electricity in the foothills of Vermont’s Green Mountains. A renowned translator of Tang dynasty poetry, Hayley walked away from her career and her addict husband to raise Frith alone in a land populated not by ambition-fueled academics but by hawks, beavers, and other wild things—including their exuberant Bernese Mountain dog, Bear. They get by on what little they earn from their overgrown apple orchard and the syrup they make from their maple trees. Frith— precocious, homeschooled, and a voracious reader—considers herself queen of this backwoods paradise. She is too young to understand the pain and regret that have followed her mother here.

    Season after season, it is the three of them—mother, daughter, and dog—until the spring day when Rose Lattimore appears at their door and upends Hayley and Frith’s solitary existence. When tragedy unexpectedly strikes, Frith must come to terms with heartbreak for the very first time. By turns joyful and searing, The Orchard reminds us that, even during the hardest of times, the enduring power of nature, love, and friendship will prevail.

    Author

    © John Burcham
    PETER HELLER is the best-selling author of The Guide, The River, Celine, The Painter, and The Dog Stars, which has been published in twenty-two languages. Heller is also the author of four nonfiction books, including Kook: What Surfing Taught Me About Love, Life, and Catching the Perfect Wave, which was awarded the National Outdoor Book Award. He holds an MFA in poetry and fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and lives in Denver, Colorado. View titles by Peter Heller

    Praise

    "Heller is a master in writing about wild places, about the hawks and the beavers and the changing of the seasons. Reading The Orchard is an escape into a world of beauty and love and friendship—and the unexpected challenges of life."
    —Denver Post

    "This gentle, moving story is an elegy to the narrator’s mother and her mom's rural Vermont childhood and beautiful Chinese poetry translations. The voice Heller creates is so real, you’ll keep forgetting it’s not a memoir, and the lovely 'ancient poetry'—all Heller’s own—is masterful.
    —Marion Winik, People

    "Contemplative and emotionally layered....Ideal for readers who love Liz Strout, Claire Keegan, or intimate, place-driven fiction. I finished it feeling hushed, like I’d walked through someone else’s memory and needed a moment to just sit with it."
    —Victoria Wood, Bibliolifestyle

    “This discreet monument of American literature reaches its point of incandescence.”
    —Le Point     (France)

    "[A] moving novel....Where [The Orchard] excels is in evoking a sense of revisiting the past and noticing the things that both were and were not said....The novel is nominally intimate in scope, featuring only a handful of characters, but it also reckons with big ideas and impossible questions. A powerful look at interpersonal bonds, familial and otherwise."
    —Kirkus (starred review)

    "Heller brings the setting to life with lyrical prose and delivers an emotionally charged, heart-wrenching conclusion. Readers are in for a treat.”
    —Publishers Weekly

    Additional formats

    Other books in this series

    Related Articles

    History

    Books for Black History Month

    In honor of Black History Month this February, we are highlighting essential fiction and nonfiction for students, teachers, and parents to share and discuss this month and beyond. Join Penguin Random House Education in celebrating the contributions of Black authors and illustrators by exploring the titles here: BLACK HISTORY – MIDDLE SCHOOL BLACK HISTORY –

    Read more

    Books for Black History Month

    History

    Penguin Random House Secondary Education

    © 2026 Penguin Random House

    Back to Top
    0
    Wish List (0)