The Orchard

"The Orchard is a wildly ambitious, propulsive novel touching on big, life-altering topics, but David Hopen manages that weight by never losing grip on the story, which blends philosophical questions with a unique thriller and a group of teenagers who command your attention. At the heart of the novel there's a yearning, a reckoning with those moments when we transform and when we wonder if we can ever go back. I'd be so wary of comparing any novel to Donna Tartt's The Secret History, but The Orchard can handle it because it diverges in such interesting ways."--Kevin Wilson, author of Nothing to See Here
David Hopen's riveting debut joins the urgency of a thriller with the devastating consequence of a spiritual crisis for its hero, who is no less imperiled by his religion than by the threat of its loss. In Ari Eden's story the clash between youth and experience, godlessness and piety, individualism and conformity, will feel both devastatingly familiar and utterly new. The Orchard throws open the doors to this world, and introduces a major new voice.--Susan Choi, National Book Award winning author of Trust Exercise
"To be transported, wholesale, into a new and unfamiliar world is one of literature's great gifts, and the opening pages of David Hopen's ambitious debut novel, 'The Orchard, ' promise exactly that.... Hopen is a stylish, atmospheric writer whose characters inhabit sensuous tableaus.... All-encompassing.... [Hopen's] talent is evident."--New York Times Book Review
"Powerful and stirring, like a 2020 Jewish version of 'The Catcher in the Rye.' Structured into chapters by month throughout a typical school year and tackling the 'majestic sadness' that is tragedy, this journal-like book written by a Yale Law School student will definitely take root." --Good Morning America
"A poignant and utterly devastating experience.... 'The Orchard' is intense and deeply moving.... Its questions are not easy, nor are the answers it provides. To discover a thought-provoking young writer like David Hopen this early in his career is a rare privilege indeed."--Anniston Star
"David Hopen's ambitious debut novel combines the religiously observant world of Chaim Potok's books with the academic hothouse of Donna Tartt's The Secret History and F. Scott Fitzgerald's observations of the rich and privileged.... [A] singular addition to the world of Jewish fiction as well as a notable variation on the classic campus novel."--BookPage
"Both fresh and affecting... Essentially The Secret History set among highly observant Jewish Floridians.... Heretics, sex, drugs, and even Talmudic rituals that border on bacchanalia abound."--Entertainment Weekly
"The most brilliant novel I read this year.... A wildly engrossing bildungsroman.--Book Riot
"Audacious.... With The Orchard Hopen may have taken the boldest step yet in the ongoing turn of the American Jewish novel back to the sources of Judaism.... The Orchard [is] something distinctively new in fiction."--Tablet
"[The Orchard] makes good on its promise to shine light on the workings of privilege in every culture."--Crime Reads