Margaret Hallow

The widow's orchard has been producing apples for eighty years—long after the widow who planted it died, long after the property should have changed, long after any orchard would normally require replanting. The apples are normal. The yield is normal. The trees are healthy and productive and there is no reason, horticulturally speaking, why they should be. But the survey now counts eighteen trees. The widow planted seventeen. *The Widow's Orchard* is folk horror about persistence, cultivation, and the question of what happens when an orchard continues producing long after the person who planted it is gone—and something new begins growing that no one remembers planting. The novel follows Eleanor Marsh, who inherited the property from her grandmother, who inherited it from the widow who planted the orchard. Eleanor is not a farmer. She is an archivist who has been gradually restoring the house and the land, learning about both as she goes. She knows that the orchard has been producing for eighty years. She knows that the widow planted seventeen trees. She knows that the survey now counts eighteen. She doesn't know which tree is the one that shouldn't exist. The novel unfolds across four seasons—following the orchard through a full year of production, through the cycles that have been repeating for eight decades. Spring: the blossom, the bees, the particular beauty of an orchard that has been cultivated for nearly a century. Summer: the growing fruit, the maintenance, the heat. Autumn: the harvest, the pressing, the apples that have been feeding the community for generations. Winter: the dormancy, the pruning, and the quiet discovery that something is growing that has been waiting for exactly this season. The folk horror elements are subtle—not overt supernatural threat, but the particular weight of an orchard that persists beyond any reasonable horticultural expectation, and the question of what the widow was actually cultivating. The trees are normal. The apples are