The Orchard Keeper Study Guide & Notes

The Orchard Keeper Plot Summary

Preview of The Orchard Keeper Summary:

Marion Sylder, a whiskey bootlegger, is attacked by the lawless Kenneth Rattner but winds up killing him in self-defense. Years later, Sylder becomes friends with Kenneth Rattner's son, John Wesley, but neither knows their tragic connection. Elsewhere in Red Branch, an old orchard keeper named Arthur Ownby gets in trouble with the law for resisting the government's intrusion on his life, symbolized by a tank they keep on his property. When all is done, Ownby is in an asylum, Sylder is in jail, and John Wesley is the sole representative of the way Red Branch used to be.

The story opens with Kenneth Rattner unsuccessfully trying to hitch-hike on a stretch of highway in Georgia, not far from Atlanta. He is trying to get to Knoxville. He meets up with the desperate Marion Sylder, who has just been fired from his job, somewhere in between and tries to make him...
(read more)