In Apple-Blossom Time: A Fairy-Tale to Date

Orphaned and cast out by her stepmother, twelve-year-old Geraldine Melody arrives at the Carder farm with nothing but a small valise and the wreckage of her childhood behind her. The apple trees are in bloom, but the farm holds shadows: the leering Rufus Carder, the hard labor of survival, and a future as uncertain as the spring weather. Yet fate intervenes in the form of Miss Mehitable Upton, a portly shopkeeper who spots the girl in a restaurant and recognizes something worth saving. Their meeting sets in motion a story about what happens when kindness meets cruelty, and whether a fairy-tale ending can be written for a girl who has already learned that fairy-tales lie. Burnham's 1911 novel balances the tender with the sinister, crafting a narrative where apple blossoms symbolize both hope and the fragility of innocence.