Books like Pioneer Species

The Orchard is a mesmerizing story of one woman’s efforts to save her family farm in Depression-era Massachusetts. It is a glimmering and moving memoir of “Kitty” Robertson’s determination to save the small orchard she inherited from her father, the last thing that linked her family to their history. It is a story of struggle and determination, and she is a heroine who didn’t receive medals or accolades or fortune for accepting the bone-cold physical labor in winters, inherited debt, broken dreams. Somehow she is able to still see the beauty in the grit of farm life in a grim period, spring blossoms in the orchard, the green of summer, the kindness of neighbors as they help each other through challenge after challenge.

In the end, it is a narrative of redemption and victory and reminds me that the life of farming and writing is hard scrapple, but it is… show more.

When I want to be astonished by the fierce and tender realities of the natural world—which is pretty much always—I read the late poet Mary Oliver. These are immersive essays by a writer who infused the very act of observation with a sacred energy—in her own words, “attention is the beginning of devotion.”

The essays are alive with animal life and soar with Oliver’s signature, forthright voice. In one essay, she rescues an injured gull. In another, she forages the eggs of a snapping turtle for dinner. Oliver humbly witnesses and partakes of the mystery and turns companionably to her reader with stirring questions: “Do you think there is anything not attached by its unbreakable cord to everything else?”

Wine writer, and now friend, Alice Feiring has often been controversial, but she has always been a champion of the kinds of wines I love, natural wines that are allowed to tell the story of where they are grown and the people who steward them. Her book Naked Wine came out in 2011, just a year after my first very small vintage of natural wines. In her own tale of making wine in Oregon and her journey tracing the roots of modern natural wine in France, Spain, and America rang so clearly for me from her stories of a wine made in a fixer-upper farmhouse in France replete with scorpions to a vineyard cum garden of Eden scented with mint and thyme in Spain, I realized I not only loved wines that told stories, but writers who tell the stories of wine and place.

This book, an icon of its… show more.

I have long loved Robert Camuto’s writing about living in Italy and the wines and winemakers he’s discovered. My own food and wine awakening happened while living and working in Italy, so naturally I gravitate to books that take place there or tell the stories of others who’ve chosen to live there against all odds. Robert Camuto’s newest book South of Somewhere has quickly risen to my list of favorites. In this evocation, he traces his own history back to the town of his ancestors, and the relationship that evolves from a life-defining memory of a childhood summer in this village to his exploration and understanding of it as an adult. His work captures the essence of Italy, Italian life, and Italian wine: “the chaos that gives birth to inspiration”.

From chapters on the nostalgia of that Southern Italian childhood summer to a series of portraits of winegrowers from Italy’s… show more.

The masculine voice in this novel is absolutely masterful. It’s tender, nuanced, earnest, and intelligent. Stegner offers a sweeping, unflinching story about friendships, marriage, the human ego, and the passage of time with a set of characters who are flawed, fragile, and therefore, very believable.

I’ve read this book more than once, and discover something new and lovely each time. This book honors a reader’s intelligence and heart. Again, the complexity in the characters and how they relate to one another gets me every time.  

I bought Blue Light Hours as a birthday gift for myself, without researching it.

The blue cover and the story of Bruna, an immigrant daughter, navigating her relationship with her loving mother, drew me in instinctively. I finished it in a single day, pulled into the quiet intensity of their bond.

The warmth and tenderness between Bruna and her mother, the anxious anticipation of reunion as her mother traveled miles, and the universal ways love expresses itself across distance and culture leapt off the pages and warmed my own heart. 

I love to explore all aspects of family drama and strife, but sometimes I prefer something with more light and hope rather than darkness and despair.

I thought this one would fit the bill. In many ways, it did. But that doesn’t mean there was a lack of tears and angst. Who wouldn’t want three wishes? And what would we do if we had them? This story explores that and more.

Moreover, it left an indelible stain on my heart while also proving all is not over after a loss. It’s an odd mix of sad and joyful… bittersweet, but elevated to another level. 

I’ve always been a Thomas Perry fan going all the way back to The Butcher’s Boy, and thoroughly enjoyed his Jane Whitefield series. His novel, The Old Man, was recently adapted for television, starring Jeff Bridges, who’s perfect as the protagonist. The thing I’ve always appreciated about Perry’s books is his careful plotting and attention to detail, which is particularly noticeable in the Jane Whitefield books. The other thing about his books is the way he can turn a villain —like the Butcher’s Boy—into a likable protagonist.  

This book was short-listed for the Mary Higgins Clark Award and named the Dogwise Book of the Year. It features ex-soldier Mercy Carr and retired military K-9 Elvis, who were both traumatized when Mercy’s fiancé—also Elvis’s handler—was killed on their last deployment.

Paula Munier is another author with a deep connection to the natural world. She is studying for a naturalist certificate in her home state of Vermont, and the books are full of great details.

This Picoult novel, written close to the time I began to shape my book, asks whether we can love across time. While the theme is much more grounded in practical and natural circumstances, the fact that the question is teased out in this novel helps shape the same question my character, Adelyn, finds herself embroiled in. Is Innis capable of breaking the barrier using the strength of a first love?