The Orange Tree

As in Chekhov's play "The Three Sisters", the characters in Mildred Walker's "Orange Tree" search for meaning and happiness in their often uneventful middle-class lives - and yet from such a seemingly ordinary premise, subtle and defining drama ensues. Editing Walker's last novel, which the author reworked for nearly two decades, Carmen Pearson has found indications that the Chekhov play had in fact been a template that Walker contemporized in "The Orange Tree". The novel centers on two families living in Boston in the 1970s: an older couple, Tiresa and Paulo Romano, and the newlyweds Olive and Ron Fifer. The fragile state of the older woman's health and the younger woman's marriage brings these two couples together in their separate and quietly desperate isolation, producing a combination of insight and compassion that only the finest story can evoke. In "The Orange Tree", Walker explores the relationships between men and women and offers an absorbing commentary on literature, writing, education, middle-class life, and the nature of friendship and of death. Mildred Walker (1905-98), a highly regarded chronicler of New England and the American West, is the author of numerous novels including "The Southwest Corner", "Fireweed", and "Winter Wheat", which was chosen in 2003 by the Montana Center for the Book as the One Book Montana selection; it is available in a Bison Books edition. Carmen Pearson recently completed the first book-length critical consideration of Walker's work, forthcoming from the University of Nebraska Press.

About the Author :
Mildred Walker (1905-98), a highly regarded chronicler of New England and the American West, is the author of numerous novels including The Southwest Corner, Fireweed, and Winter Wheat, which was chosen in 2003 by the Montana Center for the Book as the One Book Montana selection; it is available in a Bison Books edition. Carmen Pearson recently completed the first book-length critical consideration of Walker's work, forthcoming from the University of Nebraska Press.

Review :
"Walker delineates her characters with surety, unspooling Olive and Tiresa's insights on sex, class, gender roles, age and each other." Publisher's Weekly "Mildred Walker writes with an intensity and quiet fire about the life predicaments of her characters. The publication of The Orange Tree is an occasion for rejoicing." David Budbill, author of While We've Still Got Feet The University of Nebraska Press is posthumously publishing Walker's last, unfinished novel as part of its reprint collection of her fiction. The novel was rejected by two publishers in 1976, and the beginning and end have been heavily revised by Pearson, who is completing a study of Walker due shortly. Walker's simple prose and strong reliance on dialog worked well in some of her earlier works, with their themes of women coping in rustic or Western settings. This novel, with its heavy foreshadowing and dated dialog, feels more like soap opera, yet the reader is soon drawn into the domestic drama between a childless older couple and a pair of newlyweds in 1970s Boston. Paolo Romano, a doctor of Sicilian extraction, and his wife, Tiresa, a literature professor, are seen as the epitome of a cultured, devoted couple by Olive, whose own marriage to Ron, a young and oafish insurance executive, is rapidly going stale. The Romanos are oddly charmed by the beautiful but superficial Olive, and as Tiresa's health deteriorates their lives become entwined. For larger fiction collections, or where there is author interest.-Reba Leiding, James Madison Univ. Libs., Harrisonburg, VA