The Orchard Keeper is set during the inter-war period in and around the hamlet of Red Branch, a small, isolated mountain community in Tennessee.

The story revolves around three characters: Uncle Arthur Ownby, an isolated woodsman, who lives beside a rotting apple orchard; John Wesley Rattner, a young mountain boy; and Marion Sylder, an outlaw and bootlegger.

Marion dumps the corpse in a gravel pit on Arthur Ownby's property, as he knows the land well from his frequent pickups of bootleg whiskey.

John Wesley happens to be checking some traps in the area and, hearing the crash, comes to Marion's aid, helping the injured man to land.

In 1965, critic Orville Prescott argued that McCarthy’s extensive use of Faulknerian literary devices and mannerisms in The Orchard Keeper is “exasperating”, though also wrote, “Mr.

McCarthy is expert in generating an emotional climate, in suggesting instead of in stating, in creating a long succession of brief, dramatic scenes described with flashing visual impact.