The Orange Tree

Reviews / Votes

"Walker delineates her characters with surety, unspooling Olive and Tiresa's insights on sex, class, gender roles, age and each other." Publisher's Weekly "Mildred Walker writes with an intensity and quiet fire about the life predicaments of her characters. The publication of The Orange Tree is an occasion for rejoicing." David Budbill, author of While We've Still Got Feet The University of Nebraska Press is posthumously publishing Walker's last, unfinished novel as part of its reprint collection of her fiction. The novel was rejected by two publishers in 1976, and the beginning and end have been heavily revised by Pearson, who is completing a study of Walker due shortly. Walker's simple prose and strong reliance on dialog worked well in some of her earlier works, with their themes of women coping in rustic or Western settings. This novel, with its heavy foreshadowing and dated dialog, feels more like soap opera, yet the reader is soon drawn into the domestic drama between a childless older couple and a pair of newlyweds in 1970s Boston. Paolo Romano, a doctor of Sicilian extraction, and his wife, Tiresa, a literature professor, are seen as the epitome of a cultured, devoted couple by Olive, whose own marriage to Ron, a young and oafish insurance executive, is rapidly going stale. The Romanos are oddly charmed by the beautiful but superficial Olive, and as Tiresa's health deteriorates their lives become entwined. For larger fiction collections, or where there is author interest.-Reba Leiding, James Madison Univ. Libs., Harrisonburg, VA