Hothouse Bloom

An artist changes her life after inheriting an apple orchard in Wohlers’s ethereal debut. After Anna’s grandfather Joe, whom she scarcely knew, bequeaths his orchard to her, Anna arrives and quickly loses interest in painting. She chafes at her well-intentioned sheep farmer neighbors, who don’t understand her idealistic drive “to feel the depth of pleasure in the orchard’s slow changes,” given the grueling reality of farm work. The arrangement grows complicated after she invites her couch-surfing friend Jan to stay at the orchard, where he continues working on his quixotic essay about the painter Charles Burchfield. Jan frets about Anna’s abandonment of her career and her tendency to shield herself from life outside the orchard, causing her to wish she hadn’t invited him. As the fall arrives and the harvest shows significant problems, Anna reluctantly seeks help from an expert and participates in a local farmer’s market, realizing that if she wants to keep her idyll going, she can’t be fully isolated. Wohlers draws in the reader with her depiction of her main character’s esoteric inner life, even if it verges on precious (“She tried to pass entire days without thinking a single human word”). The author’s strong voice carries this otherwise gauzy tale of a woman’s search for meaning. Agent: Alex Reubert, HG Literary. (Aug.)