The Cider House Rules

by John Irving


Dr. Wilbur Larch is the founder and director of an orphanage in the town of St. Cloud. Orphanage is not only a place where all abandoned kids live; it’s a place in Maine, where women from all over the state are coming to deliver babies or to get an abortion, that was illegal at the time. Dr. Larch has dedicated all of his life to make this choice possible – to deliver the baby or to perform an abortion. Homer Wells is Dr. Larch’s favorite orphan, who was never adopted. Well actually he was adopted several times, but they always brought him back to an orphanage. So at one point he was too old to be adopted; nobody would want to adopt a 10 years old boy. They prefer babies, so Homer grows up spending most of his time at the hospital with Dr. Larch helping him. So after a while Dr. Larch discovers Homer’s talent in medicine and dreams that the boy would stay on at the orphanage after he retired. One day a young beautiful couple in a nice car stops by an orphanage. All the children hope they are here to adopt one of them and they are very disappointed when they find out that the young woman is only here to have an abortion. They are even more disappointed when the couple becomes close friends with Homer and decide to take him home with them. They didn’t adopt him because he was the same age as them. They just brought him to work for the summer at the apple farm. This was the first time for Homer to have some real friends, traveling so far from home even seeing the ocean… On that day when he leaves it’s obvious to Dr. Wilbur Larch that Homer will not be coming back…

This is a thick book; a little over a 1000 pages, but don’t worry about the amount of pages, it is well worth the time. When I was reading it, I felt like I really knew the characters. John Irving is a great author who makes his characters alive and the book unforgettable.