Summary
In the hush of a Connecticut orchard, Charlotte Marlin—skin freckled like wind-blown russet—absorbs the fable of Micah’s apple tree whose fruit mottles blood-red where a murdered peddler’s bones feed the roots. Bereft of parents, she is transplanted to a gilded cousin’s household where mirrors flatter only Margaret, the household Athena, already promised to platinum-blooded Willis Hayland. Amid velvet humiliations, Charlotte forges an alloyed friendship with Neil Kennedy, a scholarship boy patching together pre-med lectures from chalk dust and moonlight. Each slight—her valedictory thunder stolen by Margaret’s theatrical bow, her reflection dismissed as ‘serviceable’—beeds a fierce calculus: universal adoration, global renown, a seven-figure diamond. She weaponizes etiquette, smiling until it scars; she sculpts her spine into a golfer’s lethal arc, driving dimpled spheres past astonished galleries. A mis-struck iron fells magnate Perry Graham; in the hush of his convalescence he offers empire and name. Yet when his heart confesses, Charlotte hears only the orchard wind, recognizes the counterfeit in triumph, and sprints toward the modest clinic where Neil’s stethoscope waits like a vow.
Synopsis
Charlotte Marlin was raised on a Connecticut farm in the shadow of Micah's apple tree, whose fruit, according to legend, changed from pale green to spotted red after a peddler was killed and buried at its base. Orphaned, Charlotte goes to live with her aunt and pretty cousin Margaret. She meets Neil Kennedy, a poor boy who is working his way through college, and they become friends. Margaret, who is engaged to wealthy Willis Hayland, teases Charlotte, who considers herself to be plain-looking. At high school graduation Charlotte's academic achievements are obscured by Margaret's leading role in the school play. Jealous of Margaret, Charlotte resolves to make everybody like her, to be famous, and to marry a millionaire. She learns that to make everybody like her, she must be friendly to everyone. To become famous, she becomes a golfer and wins the world's championship tournament. She nurses millionaire Perry Graham after hitting him in the head with a golf ball, supposedly an accident, but when Perry falls in love with her, Charlotte realizes that she loves Neil, who has become a promising physician.
