I didn’t enjoy this as much as the previous ones. The theme/motif here was trees, apples early in the book and sequoias, towards the end, as the characters traversed from New England via Ohio to California.
An element of The Grapes of Wrath in the plot/ structure, but otherwise totally different. 720 & 723 were quite claustrophobic spatially compressed narratives, whereas this has a big geographic spread, which I don’t think she does so well.
The plot is quite grim, a very impoverished family move to Ohio to try to make a living through growing apple trees; husband and wife are totally asymmetrical and fight a lot, kids (many) die of swamp fever. The parents eventually kill each other (semi- accidentally) and one son flees eventually to California, joined towards the end by his sister, impregnated by her brother, who dies in childbirth. Robert (the son) sails to England with some sequoia samples.
It just didn’t do a lot for me as a book.
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