THE PEACH THIEF

Scilla, destitute and starving, scales the walls of a grand estate’s kitchen garden, with far-reaching consequences.

On a rainy night in Lancashire, England, in 1850, 13-year-old Scilla, formerly a resident of the Ormskirk Workhouse and now alone after the death of her companion, Dora, climbs into the Earl of Havermore’s vast kitchen garden. Food is what she’s after, and what she craves most of all is a peach, a fruit she’s tasted once before and has since dreamed of. She’s caught—and because she looks like a boy in her rough trousers and cap, stern head gardener Mr. Layton agrees to her offer to scrub plant pots to make up for the damage she caused to the earl’s cherry tree. Smith’s writing evokes the verdant atmosphere of a large 19th-century walled garden, from the ingenuity of “glass-houses” for cultivating pineapples and strawberries to the espaliered fruit trees trained to grow against the high brick walls. Supported by this rich atmospheric setting, Scilla’s journey of anxiety over her deception and her crush on a garden boy, whose rule-breaking challenges her moral compass, is made more acute by her love of learning how to garden and the novel sense of finally belonging somewhere. Scilla, who presents white, finds a caring motherly figure in housekeeper Mrs. Nandi, who’s Bengali and from Calcutta. Tantalizing details from Mrs. Nandi’s backstory, along with other storylines, enrich this deeply layered novel.

Nuanced, richly atmospheric, and exquisitely written.