Great suffering etches images of itself into human emotions. Holly Thompson uses this psychological reality to frame an arresting and authentic novel in verse. "Orchards" is a collection of spare and painful images that cut through the romanticism to underline the tragic reality of teen suicide.
Images beset the reader as they haunt the narrator of "Orchards," Thompson's third book and first young adult novel. Kana Goldberg, half Jewish-American, half Japanese, returns to her mother's ancestral home, a mikan farm in rural Japan, and struggles to understand a classmate's suicide.
Kana remembers "those left out/ those harassed/ those orbiting in unstable outer circles."