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The book:
The Orchardist
by Amanda Coplin
Harper, 448 pp., $25.99
On sale Aug. 21
What it's about: A debut novel set at the beginning of the 20th century in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, where a solitary orchard owner takes in two teenage sisters who are very scared and very pregnant.
Why it's notable: Listed in Publishers Weekly's "Top 10 Literary Fiction" of the season and O magazine's
"10 Titles to Pick Up."
Memorable line: "One hundred dollars a piece, the poster said, for the capture
of two girls called Jane
and Della. To be returned
to James Michaelson of Okanogan, Washington."
The author:
Quick bio: Coplin, 31, grew up in Wenatchee, Wash., "the Apple Capital of the World," and has degrees from the University of Oregon and
the University of Minnesota. She lives in Portland, Ore., with her partner, Ted Salk,
a forestry ecologist, who "helped with all the trees
in the book."
Her inspiration: Her grandfather, Dwayne Sanders, an orchardist and "gentle man," who died in 1994.
Literary influences: Cormac McCarthy and William Faulkner for their "strange way of being spare and lush at the same time."
———
©2012 USA Today
Visit USA Today at www.usatoday.com
Distributed by MCT Information Services


BRIEF: New voices: Amanda Coplin's debut novel, 'The Orchardist'