The Golden Orchard
By: Flora Ahn / Narrated By: Kathleen Choe
Length: 5 hrs and 15 mins
Kinda geared for a much younger audience, but I dunno that it has enough action to engage them. Made me soooo hungry though!
Maya is just a school girl with a mom who’s too busy working to talk, to answer questions, to do anything but dismiss the girl when she’s pestering her with questions like: Can’t you tell me ANYthing about my dad?
Then she shunts Maya off to take care of her grandma Halmunee whose ability to be in the moment comes and goes with the tides of dementia. Maya mostly doesn’t mind this, especially on Halmunee’s better days, on days where there’s good Korean food being cooked.
During one of these times, Maya and Halmunee are transported back in time after eating what the old woman cooked. Maya gets a chance to see her grandmother as a young woman with a handsome young husband and a little daughter, and she’s enchanted. It’s all a surprise, but afterwards, Halmunee explains that this time travel via cooking is a talent in the family.
And then there are HOURS of them going back and forth, with nothing happening, just more miles and years being logged via time travel. During one of these time excursions, Maya notices a boy who can see her (Always she and Halmunee are invisible to the people of the past), and the two form a close friendship. Jeff takes her to the Golden Orchard where people’s lives are indicated by a tree. If you have a certain talent, or skill, you’re able to go into another person’s tree and visit their lives. Jeff has the skill, and later in the story, Maya will be frantic to develop it also. She will also learn to cook so that she might time travel without the help of the often fuzzy and befuddled Halmunee.
Then EVERYthing hits the fan for the last less than one hour of the book with twists and turns that aren’t very believable (Even when you’re totally suspending disbelief for time travel accomplished through Korean cooking), and it turns out that Maya’s mother’s story is THE most interesting part of the whole book. Unfortunately, it was also THE shortest part of the book, and there was no resolution, leading me to believe that The Golden Orchard might be a setup for a sequel. If not, oh my goodness—talk about an extraORDinary amount of loose threads and pot holes that needed to be filled.
The writing is charming and the narration is adequate even if I do think that Kathleen Choe’s voice makes Maya sounds verrrrry young, too young for a budding romance. But what are ya gonna do? Still, her description of all the food they cooked up had my mouth watering as Sheltering in Place and Hoarded Shelf-Life Stable Foodstuffs have me desperately sick of oatmeal and Triscuits for this COVID-19 era. I very much appreciated that I could practically smell all the cooked delights!
So good for the younger set who wouldn’t mind the loooooong and saggy middle, and who would tolerate a bit of Girl Meets Boy without squealing indignant: Eeeeeuuuuuws!
And now, it’s back to my Triscuits….
:(
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