description: An American classic, The Orchard Keeper is the first novel by one of America's finest, most celebrated novelists.  Set is a small, remote community in rural Tennessee in the years between the two world wars, it tells of John Wesley Rattner, a young boy, and Marion Sylder, an outlaw and bootlegger who, unbeknownst to either of them, has killed the boy's father.  Together with Rattner's Uncle Ather, who belongs to a former age in his communion with nature and his stoic independence, they enact a drama that seems born of the land itself.  All three are heroes of an intense and compelling celebration of values lost to time and industrialization.
language: English
title: The Orchard Keeper
titlecomplete: The Orchard Keeper
characters: Marion Sylder, John Wesley Rattner, Arthur Ownby
genres: 20th Century, American, Historical Fiction, Southern, Literary Fiction, Novels, Southern Gothic, Literature, Classics, Fiction
ratings_count: 10327
places: Tennessee
awards: awardedAt: -126201600000
name: William Faulkner Foundation Award
publisher: Peter Smith Publisher Inc