The Orchard Keeper

<p><b>Set in rural Tennessee between the world wars, <i>The Orchard Keeper</i> is the unique, darkly biblical debut novel from the legendary author of <i>Blood Meridian</i> and <i>The Road</i>, Cormac McCarthy.</b><br> <br> <b>'McCarthy has the best kind of Southern style' - <i>New York Times</i></b><br> <br> John Wesley Rattner is a young boy when his father is murdered. Marion Sylder, an outlaw and bootlegger, strangled him to death.<br> <br> By chance, John and Marion will meet. They will not recognise each other; John will not know what this man has done.<br> <br> An experimental debut following in the footsteps of William Faulkner, this is a magnificent conjuring of an American landscape - and a devastating portrayal of innocence lost.<br> <br> <b>'A complicated and evocative exposition of the transience of life' - <i>Harper's</i></b><br> <br> Praise for Cormac McCarthy:<br> <br> 'McCarthy worked close to some religious impulse, his books were terrifying and absolute' - Anne Enright, author of <i>The Green Road</i> and <i>The Wren, The Wren</i><br> <br> 'His prose takes on an almost biblical quality, hallucinatory in its effect and evangelical in its power' - Stephen King, author of <i>The Shining</i> and the Dark Tower series<br> <br> '[I]n presenting the darker human impulses in his rich prose, [McCarthy] showed readers the necessity of facing up to existence' - Annie Proulx, author of <i>Brokeback Mountain</i></p>