Denver author Peter Heller comes to The Bookworm to promote new novel, ‘The Orchard’
The Bookworm of Edwards/Courtesy image
The Bookworm is excited to welcome beloved Denver author Peter Heller and celebrate the release of his newest novel, “The Orchard.” Available in paperback, Heller’s latest novel is a coming-of-age tale that follows a mother and daughter living on a Vermont apple orchard as they escape the ghosts of the past. There will be a Q&A and book signing following the event, with light refreshments provided.
Heller is excited that his latest novel is available as a physical book so he can share it with more readers.
“I love this book so much, and it’s such a thrill to finally have my readers able to pick up a physical copy, to set it on the bed table, to hand it to a friend,” Heller reflected. “It was first published by SCRIBD as an audio and e-book in 2021. And, oddly, in France just this year. The French are crazy about it. Le Point, the leading French magazine, called it ‘Incandescent’ and a ‘monument to American literature.’ So, I knew I probably wasn’t kidding myself! My editor at Knopf, Jenny Jackson, loved the book, too, and convinced Vintage to publish it.”
As with his other novels, Heller didn’t necessarily choose to write “The Orchard,” the story came to him and asked to be told.
“When I sit down to write a new novel, I never know who will show up,” Heller said. “I set the laptop on the table at the coffee shop and just listen. This came on such a different wavelength than the others. For one, it is narrated in the first person by a young woman, and much of the book is from the point of view of a 7-year-old girl. The child Frith is funny, full of sass and super smart. And the older Frith has her fingers on the pulse of so many of the things that are most important to me: wild country, weather, friendship, family, great storytelling and the music of language. I enjoyed writing the book almost more than any I have written.”
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Heller’s childhood at least partially inspired the book’s setting.
“I went to high school in Putney, Vermont, where my uncle and aunt and a bunch of cousins lived, and then I attended college just up the road because I didn’t want to leave that country,” Heller remembered. “I spent a lot of time running the trails through the woods and orchards, alone and with friends and cousins. There’s nothing like those orchards in early May, when the white blossoms cover the hills like snow, you can smell the fragrance for miles, and again in the fall when the mornings are cold, and the air is sweet with the scent of ripening apples. Often, even in the cold, we’d jump in an orchard pond on the way through. That landscape braided itself through my spirit.”
To Heller, it’s most important how books make readers feel, and “The Orchard” made him feel differently than any of his other books.
“I sort of abjure the brands of genre,” Heller stated. “Are the characters vivid and true? Does the language sing? Does it have pace and rhythm, does it move the reader? Does the story gallop or quietly wend, and either way, does it compel the reader forward into this new territory? For all of those reasons, is the novel irresistible and hard to put down? The greatest literature does all of that, and some of those books are full of high adventure and some are profoundly quiet. That being said, I feel like ‘The Orchard’ is different from my other novels. It hits chords somehow that I had no idea lived inside me.”
Heller hopes that after reading his latest novel, readers will be touched and inspired to share it with all their loved ones.
“The magic of reading is that everyone has such a deeply personal experience with a good book,” Heller reflected. “I hope, as with every one of my books, that the reader closes it at the end and murmurs, ‘Wow. Whoa!’ and then hands it off to a friend.”
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