The Orchardist ~ Amanda Coplin
To what extent are we responsible for the people around us?
It is the late 1800s in the American West. Talmadge, who has been tending his groves alone in the decades since his sister’s mysterious disappearance, discovers two feral pregnant girls stealing his fruit. Rather that chase them off, he feeds them and prepares beds made of leaves. All is calm, until the girls’ fraught past forces its way into the orchard. Talmadge will spend the rest of his life trying to atone for how he believes he failed one of them that crucial day.
Katherine Dykstra in More Magazine October 2012