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Bestselling novelist Tracy Chevalier introduces her new novel At the Edge of the Orchard, the story of a man wrestling with his roots in 19th-century gold-rush California.

The novel follows Robert Goodenough, youngest son of apple growers James and Sadie Goodenough, who is haunted by the broken family he fled years earlier.  He is drifting through California but eventually finds steady work with a plant collector. However, just as things seem settled he is forced to confront the brutal reason he left behind everything he loved.

Chevalier grew up in Washington DC but moved to England in 1984. Her 2000 novel, Girl with a Pearl Earring, has sold more than four million copies and was made into a Bafta and Oscar-nominated film starring Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson. Her other novels include Falling Angels, The Lady and the Unicorn, Burning Bright, Remarkable Creatures, and The Last Runaway.

Here she talks to David Grylls, associate professor of literature at the University of Oxford.

Sponsored by University of Oxford Department for Continuing Education.