Product Overview
For fans of Anne Lamott, a profoundly moving memoir of rediscovering, reinventing, and reconnecting, as an estranged mother and daughter come together to revive a long-abandoned garden and ultimately their relationship and themselves.
Peeling paint, stained floors, vined-over windows, a neglected and wild gardenTara Austen Weaver cant get the Seattle real estate listing out of her head. Any sane person would have seen the abandoned property for what it was: a ramshackle half-acre filled with dead grass, blackberry vines, and trouble. But Tara sees potential and promisenot only for the edible bounty the garden could yield for her family, but for the personal renewal she and her mother might reap along the way.
So begins Orchard House, a story of rehabilitation and cultivationof land and soul. Through bleak winters, springs that sputter with rain and cold, golden days of summer, and autumns full of apples, pears, and pumpkins, this evocative memoir recounts the Weavers trials and triumphs, detailing what grew and what didnt, the obstacles overcome and the lessons learned. Inexorably, as mother and daughter tend this wild patch and the fruits of their labor begin to flourish, green shoots of hope emerge from the darkness of their past.
For everyone who has ever planted something that they wished would surviveor tried to mend something that seemed forever brokenOrchard House is a tale of healing and growth set in a most unlikely place.
Praise for Orchard House
This touching memoir chronicles how the act of transforming a garden togetherof planting hopehelps a mother and daughter reconnect and revive the sense of groundedness that had been lost within their relationship and themselves. . . . [Orchard House] deftly [captures] the love, laughter, trials and tears that make motherhood the joy and job it truly is.American Way
Honest and moving . . . [the story of] one womans initiation into intensive gardening with her mother, which changed a neglected space into something beautiful and bountiful and shifted their relationship as well.Kirkus Reviews
Fascinating, tender, often heartbreaking . . . The perfect gift for a mother or a daughter with an appreciation for the transformative power of gardening.HGTV Gardens
A wise exploration of family roots . . . Nurturing a garden is a lovely metaphor for healing a family. . . . [Orchard House] could serve as a handbook for both.Shelf Awareness
With buoyant grace and empathic insights, Weaver offers an ardent tribute to both the science of perseverance and the art of letting go.Booklist
This is a glorious booklyrical, honest, compassionate, and wise. It reminds us that gardens and families are messy businesses, but from them we can harvest hope and food and moments of grace.Erica Bauermeister, author of The School of Essential Ingredients
Filled with sensuous descriptions, this beguiling story enchants. Gardeners and non-gardeners alike will delight in this lyrical tale of how a garden grows a family.Diana Abu-Jaber, author ofThe Language of BaklavaandBirds of Paradise
Orchard House is a glorious and deeply moving story of one familys redemption. If Anne Lamott and Wendell Berry ever had a literary love child, Tara Austen Weaver might well be her.Elissa Altman, author of Poor Mans Feast
