‘The Cherry Harvest’: A review

Casual visitors to Door County might be surprised to learn that 70 years ago German prisoners of war (POW) were brought here under armed guard to pick cherries in the orchards. But those who a few years ago watched Emilie Coulson and Katie Dahl’s musical Victory Farm produced by American Folklore Theater (now Northern Sky) or listened to Betty Crowley’s talk at the Ephraim Village Hall about her book Stalag Wisconsin: Inside WWII Prison of War Camps, know about the encampments throughout the state, including Door County, and the work assigned to German POWs. Some native residents of the county, including my friends who were young people during World War II, remember this historical fact well because they worked side by side with young German soldiers picking cherries.

Lucy Sanna in her novel The Cherry Harvest mines the dramatic potential inherent in this intermingling of cultures and ideologies; the previous task of these foreign cherry pickers, after all, had been shooting allied forces, including American boys.

In Sanna’s narrative, Thomas and Charlotte Christiansen own a large cherry orchard at the edge of Lake Michigan on County Q. They have a teenage daughter Kate who is living at home and an older son Ben who is fighting overseas. The previous year’s cherry harvest was lost for lack of pickers, men fighting in the war and potential migrants finding higher paying work elsewhere.

As the story begins, the Christiansens attend a meeting with local government officials to argue in favor of using German prisoners of war to help pick the coming cherry harvest. Because the Christiansens had a loss of last year’s income, they experience serious cash flow problems. As Charlotte has difficulty putting food on the table, she argues eloquently for the POW workers and subsequently, the officials agree to the request.

A friendly POW who had been a math teacher in Germany agrees to tutor Kate; a resentful POW who is a troublemaker lurks menacingly. And then Kate meets the upper-class college-age son of a wealthy senator who has a palatial summer place near the orchard. The plot is thickened as Kate is best friends with her brother Ben’s fiancée, the daughter of a lighthouse keeper.

The Cherry Harvest is a romance that develops from this mix of circumstances. Readers who know Door County will enjoy the local activity on familiar geography. For example, the lighthouse is located on an island off County Q, similar to Cana Island. And the historical glimpse is enjoyable, too, the time when life on the peninsula was simpler, and especially, the novel phenomenon of the POW camps in the county.

Above all else, the book is a page-turner and subsequently an ideal beach read. Suspense abounds regarding developing romances, the consequences of bad choices, and the burden of keeping immoral activity secret.

But while the novel is an entertaining read, the story is flawed in a few respects. Some of the characters, Charlotte, for example, at times lack credibility as to her motives. And the frank descriptions of sexual encounters occasionally jar readers as these trysts appear in the stylistic context of the era’s gentler times.

Those who demand historical accuracy will note some anachronisms. For instance, while a number of characters in the tale opposed the presence of German soldiers, my elderly friends who were teenage cherry pickers on the peninsula did not recall animosity toward the Germans nor did they remember any bad behavior on the part of the POWs. The prisoners were young guys, my friends recalled, no different than they were. And neither was aware of unharvested fruit before the arrival of the POWs.

A few of the anachronisms are amusing; no cherry orchards were ever located on the generally swampy land adjacent to County Q. And a romantic encounter in the waters of Lake Michigan in June is more likely to result in hypothermia than a loss of virginity.

Nonetheless authors may be forgiven for tinkering with reality in their historical fiction if the changes are necessary for engaging plot development, and Sanna’s unanticipated resolution is indeed dramatic.

When all is said and done, the taste of an apple is not compromised by the presence of an occasional blemish; the same might be said about the plot of The Cherry Harvest.

The Cherry Harvest by Lucy Sanna, 323 pages, William Morrow, 2015.