St. John's Walnuts

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People were drawn to the house – and at the same time, it terrified them. In its garden grew old walnut trees which were never allowed to yield their nuts at ripening time. For the people of Dluhonice, the Midsummer house was cursed. “It's against the Lord God,” they’d say, crossing themselves, “to knock green walnuts off the branches… It's like beating an unborn child out of its mother's womb. A sin, nothing but a sin!” But Juliana Paukrtová, her son Hanuš, and her granddaughter Vilemína knew no other way. Just like all their ancestors, on St. John's Day, they would strip all the green walnuts from the trees and throw them into barrels.

However, the years 1958 and 1959 will bring dramatic changes. Thirteen-year-old Vilemína must cope with a new path in life, moving from childish carelessness to the world of adult worries in a single year and fighting for her place. Is her mum, Albína, a capable JZD (Unified Agricultural Cooperative) agitator whom the locals dislike for her past tainted by collaboration with the Nazis, to blame for the oppressive situation in the family? Or is the cursed Midsummer house to blame for everything?

This captivating novel by Lenka Chalupová loosely follows on from the successful titles Kyselé třešně (Sour Cherries) and Páté jablko (The Fifth Apple), concluding the trilogy set in the post-war Přerov region.

About the Author, Lenka Chalupová

Lenka Chalupová is a Czech journalist and writer, a graduate of journalism at Palacký University in Olomouc, and a member of the Association of Writers. She was born on 4th February 1973 in Přerov, where she still lives with her family and works as the town's press officer. She previously worked as an editor for Přerovský deník, TV Přerov, and MF Sedmička. She has been writing since childhood, wrote her first book 'for the drawer' as a student at the age of 18, and first entered the book market at 31 – and has been regularly supplying the shelves of Czech and Slovak bookshops ever since. She has written successful novels (some of which have been reprinted due to high reader interest), and most of her stories are accompanied by a dark theme or a detective plot with an unexpected resolution. The stories are primarily set in the Přerov region, to which she is loyal not only as a patriot but also as an author. She writes books about the present and the recent past; in her last three books, Svatojánské ořechy (2023), Páté jablko (2022), and Kyselé třešně (2020), she returns to the 1940s and 1950s and engagingly portrays the fates of people from the villages near Přerov.