Peaches

Peaches is a fictional town in California’s central valley where almost the entirety of the novel takes place. The year is unknown, but can be understood to be near the present through descriptions of the internet. Drawing from her own childhood in central valley, Bieker creates a setting as a vital to the novel as any character. Peaches’ the natural landscape and intense drought is what causes the town’s desperation that makes them susceptible to Vern’s manipulations. Peaches was formally a town of grape and raisin farmers, like Lacey’s grandfather, whose farms all turned barren once the drought began when Lacey was a child. After a rain returns when Vern becomes town Pastor, the town becomes devoted to him. The drought returns some years later, and Peaches is in critical condition by the time the novel begins, and rapidly deteriorates further throughout the novel...