Beneath the Apple Leaves

May 8, 2017
In Verna’s (Daughter of Arcadia) compelling novel, the once-well-to-do Kiser family tempts fate by relocating to a ramshackle farm in the rural town of Plum, Pa., as World War I commences. After the deaths of his parents, aspiring veterinarian Andrew Houghton moves in with his pregnant aunt, Eveline Kiser, and her husband, Wilhelm, a brakeman who helps Andrew get work on the railroad. Andrew loses his arm on the job, derailing his plans for life; Wilhelm, blaming himself, hastily decides to move his brood out of Pittsburgh to get away from the railroad and to fulfill his wife’s longtime wish for country living. Misfortune quickly befalls the family—they encounter anti-German sentiment, lose family members, and attempt to farm fallow soil, and financial headaches ensure that Andrew is always in danger of ending up in the coal mines his father made him promise to avoid—but miscommunication is the problem at the heart of this novel, a trope that Verna mines very well. To his detriment, prideful Wilhelm keeps his money woes and problems to himself, forcing a wedge between himself and Eveline. Andrew falls for local misfit with a dark backstory Lily Morton, and their romance is often derailed by misunderstandings and false impressions, some of them frustratingly silly. The plot strays dangerously close to melodrama in its climax and resolution, but Verna’s skill as a storyteller makes this book a solid and worthwhile read.