The Peach Thief
The night that workhouse orphan Scilla Brown dares to climb the Earl of Havermore’s garden wall, she wants only to steal a peach—the best thing she’s tasted in her hard, hungry life. But when she’s caught by the earl’s head gardener and mistaken for a boy, she grabs on to something more: a temporary job scrubbing flowerpots. If she can just keep up her deception, she’ll have a soft bed. Eat pork pie. And the peaches? They’ll be somewhere nearby.
She soon falls in with Phin, a gardener’s apprentice who sneaks her into the steamy, fruit-filled glass-houses, calls her “Brownie,” makes her skin prickle. Yet Phin thinks Scilla is a boy, and she dare not tell him otherwise. At the same time, the gruff head gardener himself is teaching Scilla—the lowliest boy on his staff—to make things grow, and she’s cultivating hope with every seed she plants. But as the seasons unfurl, with her loyalties divided and her secret ever harder to keep, Scilla must decide who to trust—and how far she’ll go to have a home at last.
The beautiful cover art of The Peach Thief is by Chantal Horeis. Click here to see more of her wonderful work! Click here for more about Candlewick Press, the publisher of The Peach Thief.
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Bookshop Barnes & Noble AmazonPraise for The Peach Thief
“From the dramatic beginning to the equally dramatic conclusion, you’ll be caught up in all sorts of growing, from melons to apples to, most importantly, the growth we all hope for: growing into our truest selves. Scilla’s journey in this complex and surprising world fills her heart, and it will fill ours.”
—Gary D. Schmidt, Newbery Honor winner and the author of The Labors of Hercules Beal
“An apple got Adam and Eve thrown out of paradise. In Linda Joan Smith’s glowing debut novel, a peach shows a 13-year-old girl the way in.” The New York Times Book Review
“Nuanced, richly atmospheric, and exquisitely written.”
Kirkus, starred review
“Delicious.” BookPage, starred review
A “vivid story of struggle and loss spearheaded by hope…”
Booklist, starred review
“Smith’s debut serves up a historical fiction tale not to be missed. A first purchase for all libraries.”
School Library Journal, starred review
The Origins of The Peach Thief
I’m sometimes asked how the idea for this story came to be. Here is my answer.
Years ago, I bought an antique garden book in San Francisco. It caught my eye because the name of the gardener who first owned it was stamped in gold on the book’s leather cover, along with the name of the town where he lived and a date: 1850. When I looked inside, I discovered handwritten lists of the plants he grew, along with an inscription: William Davies, Came to reside at Ladycroft, Huyton on Monday 16th August 1847.
I was hooked. Who was William Davies? What was his story? Where was Huyton, and Ladycroft, and what had brought Mr. Davies there? I wanted to travel back in time and talk with him!
One Gardener Leads to Another
The book itself, The New and Improved Practical Gardener and Modern Horticulturist, was written for gardeners who worked for the British upper classes during the Victorian era. It didn’t take me long to realize that the author, Charles McIntosh, was a teacher at heart. He also was a man with an incredible breadth of knowledge about the design, building, and seasonal operations of the vast walled gardens that supplied the kitchens of the elite.
I had known about such enclosed gardens since falling in love with The Secret Garden as a child. But the garden in that book was a flower garden only—and the walled kitchen gardens McIntosh described were so much more than that! I longed to give young readers a glimpse of these once astounding places, and introduce them to the people who worked within their walls.
Thus the fictional character of Mr. Layton—a head gardener who’s a combination of William Davies and Charles McIntosh—sprang to life in my imagination.
A Place and a Time in Victorian England
William Davies’s personalized book gave me a place as well as a time in which to set my tale: in a kitchen garden, near Huyton, in the historic English county of Lancashire, in the middle of the 19th century. That location led me to historic Knowsley Hall, just up the road from Ladycroft. Owned for centuries by the Earls of Derby, Knowsley in the 1850s had a vast walled kitchen garden famous for its fruit: a spot well worthy of my head gardener Mr. Layton’s talents.
Scilla Arrives, Dressed as a Boy
And so arose a question: what sort of young character would best be suited to steal into an earl’s walled kitchen garden? I wanted someone who would be as stunned by the riches of these gardens as I was. Somehow who was locked out of this elite world, for all sorts of reasons, including her gender and social class. Someone who was alone, without a family or a home. Someone who needed a place to heal, and learn, and grow. Someone who was hungry.
Thus came Scilla Brown. And this story.
Click here to learn more about Knowsley, the estate and garden that inspired fictional Bolton Hall in The Peach Thief.