California – She Reads Novels

This week, Mallika of Literary Potpourri is hosting Reading the Meow, a celebration of books featuring cats. When this event was first announced, I wasn’t sure if I had anything suitable; The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr by ETA Hoffmann would have been perfect, if I hadn’t just read it last year. Then I came across a whole series of books with cats in them (or in the titles, at least): Dolores Hitchens’ Rachel Murdock mysteries, some of which have now been reissued as part of the American Mystery Classics imprint. The Cat Saw Murder, originally published in 1939, is the first and I hoped it would be a good choice for Reading the Meow.

The novel begins with elderly Miss Rachel Murdock going to stay with her adopted niece, Lily Sticklemann, who lives at Breakers Beach near Los Angeles. Lily has hinted that she’s in trouble and needs advice, so Miss Rachel has packed her case and set off by train to see if she can help. Her less adventurous sister Jennifer has stayed behind, but Miss Rachel is accompanied by Samantha, the black cat who once belonged to their other sister, Agatha. Agatha was an eccentric woman and on her death she left her fortune to the cat, meaning that Samantha is now a wealthy heiress in her own right. After meeting Lily and discovering that she is having financial difficulties, Miss Rachel becomes concerned for Samantha’s safety, suspecting that Lily has her eye on the cat’s inheritance. However, Lily herself is the one who is murdered – and it seems that Samantha may have been a witness.

There are plenty of suspects – Lily lives in a boarding house, Surf House, and is murdered in her bedroom, which means all of the other residents of the building immediately come under suspicion. Several also have a motive for the crime, as Lily owes gambling debts to some of them and is thought to have been romantically involved with another. Although this is not a locked-room mystery exactly (we know that the bedroom door opens and closes more than once during the night of the murder), it does share many elements of that kind of mystery, but thankfully never becomes too concerned with the puzzle-solving aspects at the expense of the characters and motives.

Miss Rachel is a great character; I found her very endearing and quite similar to Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple in many ways, although she’s more agile and energetic for her age than Miss Marple is and spends a portion of the book searching rooms and crawling around in the attic. She has a good relationship with the detective investigating the murder, Lieutenant Mayhew, and they both contribute, in their different ways, to the solving of the mystery.

The plot feels slightly disjointed at times and there are some confusing shifts between past and present tense (the book seems to be narrated by someone at an unspecified future date looking back on Mayhew and Miss Rachel’s first case), but otherwise I really enjoyed this book and it did turn out to be a good choice for Reading the Meow. Samantha the cat, although not the main focus of the story, does have a substantial part to play and provides some intriguing clues. The second book in the series is The Alarm of the Black Cat and I think I’ll be tempted to read it soon!

This is book 1/20 of my 20 Books of Summer 2023

It’s been some time since I last read a Tracy Chevalier novel, but having enjoyed some of her books in the past, I was pleased to have the opportunity to read her latest one, At the Edge of the Orchard.

The story begins in 1838 in the Black Swamp of Ohio, where James and Sadie Goodenough are attempting to make a living from the harsh, inhospitable earth on which they have settled. With the help of their five children, James is working hard to establish an orchard with enough apple trees to satisfy the requirements to legally claim their piece of land. Sadie, who does not share her husband’s ambition, longs to move on and start again somewhere else – somewhere more comfortable and welcoming. Finding solace in the strong cider and applejack produced from the fruits of the orchard, Sadie’s is a miserable existence from which there seems to be no escape.

Time passes and we jump forward to the 1850s where the youngest Goodenough son, Robert, has made his way alone to California. What happened to the rest of the family? Why does Robert never get a reply to the letters he sends home to his brothers and sisters? We’ll have to wait until later in the book for these questions to be answered, but in the meantime we read about Robert’s work with the plant collector William Lobb, gathering seeds and plants to sell to gardeners in England. Having grown up surrounded by trees, this is the sort of job that interests Robert – yet there is still something missing from his life, and when he is finally given a chance of happiness, he will have to decide whether to take it.

I enjoyed At the Edge of the Orchard and found it a surprisingly compelling read. I say ‘surprisingly’ because, despite the title and the picture on the cover, which should have been clues, I wasn’t fully prepared for so much information on trees: in the orchard sections, we learn about different types of apple tree – the qualities of ‘eaters’ versus ‘spitters’; the taste of James’ favourite Golden Pippins; and the methods used to graft one tree onto another – and in the California sections we are given a wealth of information on the giant sequoia trees of Calaveras Grove. I have to admit, although I do appreciate the beauty and importance of trees, I have very little interest in them. I’m impressed that Tracy Chevalier managed to hold my attention from the first page to the last; I was never bored and would never have expected a book about trees to be so engaging!

Of course, this is not just a book about trees – it’s also a book about human beings, following the stories of several very different characters. At first, the Goodenoughs don’t seem to be a very pleasant set of people. James is decent enough, but with a tendency to be violent when things annoy him and a frustrating single-mindedness when it comes to growing and nurturing his precious apple trees. His wife, Sadie, is a deeply unhappy woman but any sympathy I may have had for her was destroyed by her bitter, spiteful nature and needlessly cruel actions. It wasn’t until later in the novel that I found some characters I could like and care about. In fact, a series of letters written by two of these characters broke my heart…the sense of loneliness and desperation they each felt came across so strongly.

The novel is carefully structured, moving backwards and forwards in time to ensure that certain things are kept hidden until it becomes necessary for us to know them. A mixture of styles are used to tell the story too, from the letters I’ve mentioned above to conventional third party narration and several passages narrated by Sadie in a very distinctive voice of her own. Although the story of the Goodenoughs is fictional, we also meet several real historical figures: the legendary Johnny Appleseed is one you may have heard of, but the English tree collector William Lobb was also a real person. There are so many different elements to At the Edge of the Orchard and they all come together to form one fascinating, enjoyable and very moving novel.

I’ve now read four Tracy Chevalier novels and so far they have all been very different, covering such diverse subjects as the Dutch art world (Girl with a Pearl Earring), fossil collecting on the south coast of England (Remarkable Creatures), religious conflict in 16th century France (The Virgin Blue) and now the trees and orchards of 19th century America. I’m looking forward to reading the rest of her books now that I’ve been reminded of them!

Thanks to HarperCollins for providing a review copy of this book via NetGalley.