The Light Between Apple Trees: Rediscovering the Wild Through a Beloved American Fruit

Nature writer Kumar (Conversations with Birds) explores the history and diversity of apples in this thorough mix of memoir and ecology. Growing up in northern India, Kumar started foraging for apples at age 5 in the Himalayan foothills. Now living in New Mexico, where grocery store apples are “cardboard-like” and “hollow,” she began searching for wild apple trees and exploring America’s frayed relationship with the fruit. Originating in central Asia, apples were first brought to North America by Spanish conquistadores and French Jesuits in the 1500s and 1600s. Over the next centuries, apples were cultivated coast to coast and became the most diverse domesticated crop in America, at one point having more than 16,000 named varieties. Now, only a fifth remain available, thanks to industrial agriculture’s focus on high yields of supermarket-ready fruits. The decline in diversity leads to dull flavors, Kumar explains, and leaves the fruit more vulnerable to climate change and disease. The author couples her extensive research with personal stories, including numerous anecdotes about home gardening and raising children. The narrative meanders at times and is often bogged down by metaphors (“This wild gardening, tucked into the margins of our lives”). Still, readers will be inspired to reconnect with nature. (Sept.)