Origin story of first novel— The orchard keepers

Immigration, legal and otherwise, women finding their place through work and family, sexual abuse, the question ‘where is home’ infuses this novel with contemporary themes and subtly influenced by my childhood. Inspiration for The Orchard Keepers, came, in part, from the many summers I spent on my grandparents fruit orchards in the Yakima’s lower valley where I wandered around as a child amongst the working men and women and their children. A confluence of ideas—sisters struggling with their relationship, multiple sclerosis that my own sister lived with, abuse, power imbalance between powerful men and those who work for them—came together. I use this setting and the orchard work to expose the unraveling of a marriage and a family as they make their jagged way back to a new whole.

The Orchard Keepers is set in the working fruit orchards of Eastern Washington State and Chihuahua, Mexico with a thematic focus on borders—personal ones, between men and women, between men of power and those they need to do the work, between undocumented and American born, and the distance between home in Mexico and home in America.