Introduction

"Amazing writing and novel!! The story is gripping and touches the deepest parts of us. It shows us that love is not always pretty or easy but it will see us through the harvest."--Amazon 5-star review

Abbie Hardin never fully banished the shadows of her sexual assault nineteen years ago by her friend and neighbor Drew Legrange. But when Drew moves back to take over his family’s orchard after his dad’s heart attack, Abbie is forced to examine the emotional barriers she has constructed to protect herself and the distance they put between her and her son Evan, who she conceived from that assault. Evan discovers he is curious about the father he never knew and was raised to hate. When Abbie hires Buddy, a soft-spoken drifter who keeps his past to himself, to work on her farm, the paintings he creates of her and their unexpected intimacy open her eyes to the woman that detachment and torment have made her. Attracted to a vagabond without an identity, afraid her son may follow in his father’s awful footsteps, and living across the creek from the man who assaulted her, Abbie realizes that the person she became to survive no longer suffices when her past becomes her present again.

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Excerpt

Silence fell between them again for a while. He didn’t seem to be bothered by it; he just wasn’t forthcoming. He said what needed to be said, usually very politely. She found it odd that he hadn’t asked her anything about herself. Not that her life was terribly interesting, but here they were, two strangers working closely together with barely a word between them. No wonder her friends from her high school years had eventually stopped calling. Or had she stopped calling them and they grew weary of doing all the work to keep any kind of bond between them?

“Eustace isn’t really a town so much as a collection of farmsteads,” she said. “Most families have been here for generations, some like mine since around the Civil War.”

“It’s nice, I like the slow quiet of farmland,” Buddy said. “Last city I spent any time in was New Orleans. Great music, good food, but that town’ll wear you down if you don’t watch yourself.”

He scooted down a bit and reached his hand back again. Abbie slipped another root ball into it.

“It was a good place to visit for a few days,” he went on, “but I was there about a month washing dishes in the Quarter and scrubbing beer and piss and vomit from the sidewalks in the mornings. I like it out in the country. Nobody for miles around. You can do whatever you want, you know what I mean? You could run naked through the field and scream at the top of your lungs and no one would hear you.”

Abbie’s eyes narrowed and the hands she was extending with a plant to Buddy froze. Naked and screaming echoed in her ears, which pounded with her jolted heartbeat. Buddy scooped the soil with his sharp trowel then whacked it against his knee to shake the dirt from it, still squatting with his back to her. From her rigid stance, she shifted her weight to the balls of her feet and stared at the back of his head. He reached a hand out behind him. After a second, he wiggled his fingers, and she realized he was waiting for her to put a plant in it. She let the one she was holding slip from her hand into his.

Buddy nestled it into the hole and scooped dirt around it with his trowel. “Nearest house is a quarter mile away. You get lonely out here?”

He pushed himself up just a foot away from her and shook the trowel by his hip. Abbie jumped back and reached her hand behind her to the pistol in her waistband, but she collided with the cart and tumbled over it onto the ground, putting her hands out to catch herself as pots of upended tomato plants rained down on her. Face down in the loose soil, she rolled over and spat the dirt from her mouth and scuttled on her back away from him. The pistol had slipped from her hand when she fell and landed on the ground at Buddy’s feet.

Her eyes shot from the gun—too far away—to Buddy. He looked down at it for several of her ragged breaths. He picked it up and held it loosely in his gloved hand as he straightened. Then he turned it around to hold it by the barrel and took the few steps over to return it to her.

Her cheeks flushing, she sat up and took the pistol. “I don’t know you,” she said.

“I know.”

His hand was still extended down to her. After a moment, she reached out and put her hand in his, and he drew her upright. Their eyes were at the same level. His were golden brown, with early crow’s feet at the corners and a furrowed brow with sweat and dirt in the crevices. She released his hand and turned away.

“Let’s break for lunch,” she said, walking back to the house. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

Written by the author:

1. Why do you think Abbie decided to keep the child that she conceived? How would her life have been different if she had made a different decision?

2. The novel gives a voice to three central characters so that each of their perspectives is considered. How do you feel about Drew, the perpetrator of the assault, having a voice in this story? Did his perspective make you uncomfortable? If it provided any insight, what was it?

3. Evan’s father has been gone from Eustace since before Evan was born. How has someone who was never there and something that happened before he was born had an impact on Evan’s life?

4. Abbie is taken aback that Evan shows an interest in getting to know a father he has never met and was raised to hate. What other situations in family dynamics mirror this situation? How would you have reacted in a similar situation with a child of yours?

5. What is it about Buddy, or what is it about Abbie at this point in her life, that draws her to him?

6. Why is it important to Abbie that Buddy rediscover his identity? If you were in a situation similar to Buddy’s, what choice would you make?

7. If Drew had been a stranger who assaulted Abbie, instead of a neighbor and friend, do you think Evan would have shown the same interest in Drew? What is it that drives Evan’s interest?

8. Do you empathize with Evan’s paternal grandparents, George and Carol Legrange, for their desire to welcome Evan into their family? Why or why not?

9. Abbie and Evan’s family situation is aggravated by the smallness of the town they live in and their proximity to her attacker’s family. Why do you think Abbie chose to stay on the farm and how did that choice impact their lives?

10. Is it necessary to forgive someone in order to move beyond a trauma they have caused? Who does an act of forgiveness benefit the most, and why? What alternatives to forgiveness provide one or both of the parties healing?

11. What does the creek symbolize in the story? What do the apples symbolize? What do the wild hogs symbolize?

Weblinks

»	Author's website
»	Trailer for festival-favorite short-film adapted from the book Author's note: Far From the Tree is a short film I wrote based on portions of the novel Through the Harvest. Produced by WOW Films and starring Cheryl Griffin-Allison, Gabriel Rush, and Angie Bolling,

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