Check out my review at: http://www.shannonsbookbag.blogspot.com/2012/05/orchard-weir.html ( )

I'm not a big memoir reader and frankly tried this book because it was on sale at Amazon. It was definitely worth the read and very enjoyable and heartbreaking. ( )

After having The Orchard on my ereader for several years I began it almost on a whim. The memoir was supposed to be my back-up book, always there in my purse for emergency reading needs, but once I started in on it I found it hard to do anything else.

Theresa Weir came from a very broken home. First her father abandoned the family, and then her mother drove off or disposed of her and her siblings one by one. Weir was barely twenty-one and living and working in her uncle’s seedy country bar when she met Adrian, a young apple farmer who loved to draw. After a brief but passionate courtship of just a few months they married, against the wishes of both their families and hardly knowing what they were getting into.

Though the locals claimed Adrian’s family orchard was cursed Weir thought she’d be leading a strange-to-her but idealized farm life, but while she loved her husband it didn’t quite turn out that way. Her in-laws’ obsession with the family legacy of growing perfect unblemished apples made them harsh and controlling, Adrian labored from dawn until dusk, and the heavy scent of pesticides was always in the air.

Weir was used to difficulty and hard work, so though they barely knew each other when they married she and Adrian made a loving life together, but there’s a lot of heartbreak in their story. It’s a compelling cautionary tale, and this memoir of farm life and family is both beautifully written and deeply moving. ( )

I don't usually read memoirs but I met this author years ago and loved her fiction. She writes as Theresa Weir and Anne Frasier. I was pulled into this memoir that read like a novel. I thoroughly enjoyed this story. I couldn't wait to see what would happen next and had to keep telling myself this was true. Like her novels, it is a little edgy, in a good way. I totally understand why it was an Oprah pick. Thanks so much for sharing, Theresa. ( )

This memoir about young love and acceptance in the middle of a pesticide-filled apple orchard was pretty unique, but not entirely compelling. Weir is writing about her late husband and the early years of their marriage. The changes in Weir and her husband from the beginning of the memoir to the end are striking, but I wish Weir had spent more time on that evolution. She doesn't do a particularly good job of showing how and why they change. Perhaps much of it is still too painful for her (I hate criticizing memoirs because they are so personal to the authors). Read it if you are interested in apple orchards and the use of pesticides. ( )