Cormac McCarthy-The Orchard Keeper

The Orchard Keeper tells the story of the aged Uncle Ather Ownby, a ferociously independent woodsman who lives at peace with the natural world in a small cabin adjacent to a ruined apple orchard. There, he has been for years quietly tending the corpse of an unknown stranger that mysteriously turned up in his rain-filled spray pit. Ather also attempts to teach his knowledge about the mountains and forests to young John Wesley Rattner, a mountain boy whose father, the petty criminal and con man Kenneth Ratner, has been murdered by Marion Sylder, a local bootlegger. John Wesley, who believes his father was a hero, is unaware that his uncle Ownby has been guarding the corpse, and Ather himself has no idea whose body he has been honoring. The story’s ironies grow more complex when Sylder defends the boy against his own nemesis, the bullying sheriff’s deputy Legwater, and John Wesley comes to regard the dashing Sylder as his hero; the bootlegger, in turn, has no idea that the man he had murdered and dumped in the spray pit was John Wesley’s father.