Cormac McCarthy

Set in a small, remote community in rural Tennessee in the years between the two world wars, The Orchard Keeper is an early classic from one of America's finest and most celebrated authors. It tells of John Wesley Rattner, a young boy, and Marion Sylder, an outlaw and bootlegger who, unbeknownst to either of them, has killed the boy's father. Cormac McCarthy's debut novel is a magnificent evocation of an American landscape, and of a lost American time.

The Orchard Keeper

Patrick Book

3.5 at least. He has always had an incredible eye for detail!

Set in a small, remote community in rural Tennessee, this book tells of John Wesley Rattner, a young boy, and Marion Sylder, an outlaw and bootlegger who, unbeknownst of either of them, has killed the boy's father. Together with Rattner's Uncle Ather, the three enact a drama.

Michael Springer

The Orchard Keeper was Cormac McCarthy's first book, originally published back in 1965. It was interesting reading this one closely after reading his most recent book, The Road. 

(I read a very early copy of the book, with the original blurbs on the jacket. Random House was very sure of the book's popularity and importance, enough so to suggest McCarthy was a writer who would inevitably be recognized as a master at some point. They clearly had no idea it would take about 30 years for him to start selling gobs of books. Thank god, or he probably would've never been published.)

This is the story of three different characters living in Appalachia in the early 1900's. One is an old man who has been concealing a body that turned up on his property years ago. Another is the dead man's son, who believes his dad was a swell guy and who wants revenge on his father's killer. The final character is a bootlegger, and is the man who actually killed the guy in the pit. 

The old man has no idea whose body he guards. The young boy has no idea his father abandoned him and wasn't planning on ever returning. The bootlegger has all but forgotten the dead man, who he murdered in self-defense and tossed into a bog. 

My quick explanation is a little confusing. The point is, none of the characters know much about the others, and none of them have any idea what strange connections they have with the other two. 

The ironies run deep here, as the boy thinks of the man who killed his father as a hero, and the old man continues sheltering the body of a total sleeze-ball as the body decomposes. The story ends tragically, as Cormac McCarthy stories often do. Somehow, despite the low body count, I found this story much sadder than most of his works. 

As a writer, I am impressed at how good this book is considering it's a first novel. It's a subtle, strange, evocative book, and all of the stylistic elements that distinguish McCarthy are already intact here. Little punctuation, incredible dialogue, a wonderful evocation of place. That said, it is quite slow, and probably isn't the best starting place for someone new to McCarthy. But it is definitely worth reading for fans of his writing. So, I'm going with four stars. Not as amazing as The Road, but very good.

A young boy, an old man, and the outlaw who has unknowingly killed the boy's father, all try to resist the changes brought about during the period between the wars

The Orchard Keeper

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