The Orchardist's Daughter.
Karen Viggers.
Allen & Unwin. 2019. 400 pp.
ISBN 978 1 76063 058 4.
She was asleep when it happened, so she did not hear the embers collapse as the log rolled from the fireplace onto the floor.
Now that her parents are dead and the farm has been sold to pay off debts, her brother, Kurt, acts as her guardian. Together, they run a fish-and-chip shop, the only one in their small town, but Kurt is even more controlling than her parents had been. He supervises her every encounter with customers, keeps the accounts to himself (although Miki is adept at adding up the profits in her head) and locks her in the house whenever he goes out.
Every Saturday night, Kurt takes Miki with him to the tip at the edge of town to help him get rid of the rubbish. And whilst he goes off to make private phone calls or to attend to his beehives deeper in the forest, Miki explores. For Miki, "coming here was the highlight of her week". Gradually Miki gets to know the animals which live at the tip—small spotted quolls and, unusually, Tasmanian Devils, which sound fierce but which Miki admires as "feisty." She notices that some of the devils have sores on their faces and, later in the book, she leads some scientists to them so that they can assess them for the cancer which makes them a threatened species in Tasmania.
But this is jumping ahead. First, Miki has to establish some sort of freedom for herself. She finds various secret ways of doing this when every Tuesday Kurt locks her in and goes into the nearby city of Hobart on mysterious business errands.
Nervous in her new adventures, Mike ends up one day in the local visitors centre where she not only sees a short video about the cancer threatening the Tasmanian Devils but, more importantly, meets middle-aged Geraldine, who runs the centre. Aware that Miki is under some sort of restraint, and learning that they share an interest in reading, Geraldine lends Miki carefully chosen books (Little Women, The Prince, The Old Man and the Sea...). From each of these, Miki learns something about independence, self-knowledge and freedom of choice. By the end of Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd "she knew that she and Bathsheba had much in common. Miki wanted to go out into the world and meet people too. She wanted to get to know them. Be independent. Fall in love. Make mistakes."
Miki's developing sense of self and her deep love of the forest are just one theme in this book. A second strand of the story follows the efforts of a young man, Leon, as he begins a new job in the town as a Parks ranger. In this small community, many of the men work in the logging industry and see rangers as "greenies" who will want to save the trees and will put them out of work, so, automatically, they see Loen as a threat. Leon's attempts to become part of the community in which he now lives seem doomed to failure.
At the same time, Leon is dealing with guilt at leaving his mother without protection from his sometimes abusive father. One saving grace, which turns out to be vitally important, is his re-acquaintance with his grandfather, a remarkable old man who was once a champion logger. At a loggers rally, the old man is hoisted onto a stage amidst much ill-feeling, confronts the loggers, earns their attention and prevents a potentially violent confrontation with environmental activists.
There are dark secrets associated with Kurt and many dramatic situations which generate tension in this book as the reader gets to know and become involved in the lives of a number of town's people. At the same time, Miki's and Leon's lives are set against a backdrop of concerns associated with living in a small Tasmanian town where such things as domestic violence are know but not talked about, football is an often violent but essential part of the community activities and bonding, and environmental concerns, the logging of Tasmanian forests, and potential job-losses are ongoing concerns.
Karen Viggers, who is a wildlife veterinarian and has worked with native animals in Australia and the Antarctic, clearly loves the land and writes beautifully of it with knowledge and love. Altogether, The Orchardist's Daughter is an absorbing and satisfying book.
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