The Orchard Keeper

The Orchard Keeper is the first novel by the American novelist Cormac McCarthy.

The novel is set in a small, isolated community in Tennessee, during the inter-war period. It is the story of John Wesley Rattner, a young boy, and Marion Sylder, an outlaw and bootlegger, who has killed Rattner's father, a fact to which both are oblivious.

The main themes of the novel include fostering, hospitality, and nature. Woven in amongst descriptions of harsh surroundings, sudden actions - a swing of a tire iron, a porch falling off a building, a car falling into a creek, an owl swooping down - become turning points which in turn become new environments in which McCarthy's characters evolve.