The Ghost Orchard

In the vein of H is for Hawk and the work of Mark Kurlansky, The Ghost Orchard takes a fascinating look at the secret history of an iconic food. Delving deep into the history of the apple in North America, Humphreys touches on the role of Native peoples in early North America, the question of agricultural diversity and her own grappling with the terminal illness of her oldest friend.

In the nineteenth century, there were more than seventeen thousand varieties of apples in the United States and Canada. Now there are fewer than one hundred varieties grown commercially; only fifteen varieties accounted for over 90 per cent of production in 1999. The apple was brought to North America from England in the seventeenth century, and Humphreys discovered in her research that it was cultivated by Native peoples throughout Canada and the US, resulting in so-called Indian orchards that thrived for hundreds of years. Indeed, the history of the apple here can be viewed as the history...