Orchard

Adele Crockett Robertson was born in 1901 at her family’s farm in Ipswich, Massachusetts. After the orchard years, she was a writer with the WPA and worked in a shipyard and in a factory. At age fifty she became a journalist and won several New England Press Awards. A beloved local figure, Ms. Robertson served as Ipswich selectwoman, and her commentary on current events and politics was widely read. The Ipswich Town Hall flew its flag at half-mast on the day she died in 1979.Betsy Robertson Cramer is the daughter of Adele Crockett Robertson. Ms Cramer discovered the manuscript for The Orchard after her mother’s death and saw to its publication.Jane Brox is the author of Silence (an Editors’ Choice by The New York Times Book Review) and other award-winning works of nonfiction. She lives in Brunswick, Maine.

“Brave and beautiful . . . tells us who we are and where we live.” —John Updike“Robertson writes with evocative clarity.” —New York Times“Robertson’s prose is clean and fluid . . . [she is] a keen observer, both of nature and her fellow humans.”—Washington Post “Lusciously vivid . . . emotionally piercing.” —Boston Globe“Robertson manages to convey the sense in which self-knowledge and peculiar joy can flow from hardship.” —Cleveland Plain Dealer