Cherry Picking in the Okanagan – Author Q&A by Andrew Shephard

Sorry if this appears rude, but why would I want to read about picking cherries?

Fair question. Well, the book is not a guide to picking cherries, but there is a lot of fruit in it. And water. It’s a novel set in a camp for migrant fruit pickers beside Lake Okanagan in Canada. The workers are a mixed bunch of French Canadians, US draft dodgers, First Nation people, and Indians from India. A couple of English students, Lionel and Walker, get work there in the summer of 1976. They take a fancy to three young French Canadian women, two of whom are sisters. Four decades later, Lionel has become a senior politician and Claudette, the younger of the sisters, accuses Lionel of rape.

Why did you choose the Okanagan Valley for the setting?

Travelling through Canada in the 1970s I camped for the night in small place called Oyama. The next morning, there were two people already hitching at the highway junction so I went into a café for breakfast. I asked if anyone knew where I could get work. A guy with a pick-up full of hay bales offered to drive me to an orchard where he knew the foreman. The foreman first offered me a beer and then a job. We talked and drank beer all morning and then I helped pick-up man with his second load of hay. The landscape, the community of pickers, the hard grind of labour, and the fascination of a lake with unplumbed depths have stayed with me. Writing the novel enabled me to go back there and re-inhabit a time and a place in my mind. Looking at Google Earth now, the setting has gone – the lake is lined with fancy villas and the road is tarmac.

You seem to have a large cast, but who is the main character?

The story is told by Walker. For him, it is a rite of passage story, and he returns to university a changed man. But with the allegations against his former friend Lionel, his personal story becomes a wider one. He thought of Lionel as an attractive, irritating rogue, but in recalling his experiences to a journalist he begins to question his own interpretation. Was there always an elephant on the table, or in this case, a monster in the lake?

How are you promoting the book in this time of restrictions? Have you done a virtual book launch?

My previous novel, Nellie and Tabs, was published as a paperback. But that was when everything was not considered potentially contagious and I could talk, wave my book at people and ask them to post a review. Cherry Picking is available as a totally safe ebook, free if you already have Kindle Unlimited, and a modest £2.99 if not. I am better at writing a book than promoting a book. As a child, I was cautioned against blowing my own trumpet. I hoped that, by some miracle, unknown kind individuals would do that for me. But of course everyone is busy with their own life and work. 

What are you working on now? Have you found lockdowns conducive to writing?

I have written little down, just pre-publication editing. There is a time for writing and a time for experience. I have been living in days. I don’t know what will come next except tomorrow. If you don’t do ebooks and want something to read and touch, I wholeheartedly suggest From a Mountain in Tibet by Lama Yeshe Losal Rinpoche (Penguin). It may touch you too.

Thank you and au revoir. Soon.

Click here to see the ebook.