In Conversation: On The Orchard

Molly Tolsky is a writer and editor originally from Chicago, currently living in New York. She is the founder and editor of Alma, a feminist Jewish culture site from 70 Faces Media. Formerly the editor of Kveller, she is also senior editor of the literary journal No Tokens. She received a BA in fiction writing from Columbia College Chicago and an MFA in fiction writing from Sarah Lawrence College. She is currently at work on a collection of short stories and a novel.

David Hopen is from Hollywood, Florida. He graduated from Yale College and earned his master’s degree from the University of Oxford. In is his debut novel The Orchard (Ecco ) we meet Ari Eden. His life has always been governed by strict rules. In ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn, his days are dedicated to intense study and religious rituals, and adolescence feels profoundly lonely. So when his family announces that they are moving to a Miami suburb, Ari seizes his unexpected chance for reinvention. In his new school, an opulent Jewish academy, Ari is stunned by his peers’ dizzying wealth, ambition, and shameless pursuit of life’s pleasures. When the academy’s golden boy, Noah, takes Ari under his wing, Ari finds himself entangled in the school’s most exclusive and wayward group. Influenced by their charismatic rabbi, the group begins testing their religion in unconventional ways. Soon Ari and his friends are pushing moral boundaries and careening toward a perilous future—one in which the traditions of their faith are repurposed to mysterious, tragic ends. In a starred review, Booklist called it “a brilliantly conceived and crafted coming-of-age novel of ideas, replete with literary and philosophical references […] Unforgettable.”