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In The Orchard The Swallows
This short book, In The Orchard The Swallows, will leave you longing. In a strange mix of emotions, the end is finished but in a way, tells you nothing. It leaves you with a sense of completion and a sense of sadness. It makes you want to go down your own memory lane to contemplate the twists and turns of your life. Your mind might drift to the decisions you made and the people you met. The choices you wish you could revisit might resurface. You will likely consider happy memories and the ones that make you cringe. For such a small read, it really does make an impact on the reader.
The story asks questions that you may not have the answers to. Should children be held accountable for their actions in the same way that adults are? Is there a such thing as love so overwhelming and intense that it waits, and accepts nothing else?
Author Peter Hobbs
Peter Hobbs writes in such a way that the reader hangs onto every word and is stirred by them. The descriptions of nature are beautiful. They starkly contrast with the dangerousness of challenging power and authority, no matter the reason. The assumed innocence of childhood is missing, and the evilness that exists in the hearts of men very real.
Hobbs writes, “I gather my breath. I try to imagine the weakness in my legs bleeding out into the dirt, being replaced by some vitality which ekes from the tree into my back. I wait as long as I am able, until the sun has found the road above and the skyline begins to glow bright, the mountain-tops white and blinding. The light will reach me soon. But I cannot stay to see it. In a few moments, before the evidence of life begins to show in the small house through the trees, before the farmer comes to his orchard and finds me here, I will stand and brush the sand from my shalwar, stretch once again to ease the aches in my muscles and joints, and begin the slow journey home” (Hobbs 13).
Published in 2014, if you haven’t read it yet, it’s time.
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