As in Chekhov's play The Three Sisters, the characters in Mildred Walker's Orange Tree search for meaning and happiness in their often uneventful middle-class lives--and yet from such a seemingly ordinary premise, subtle and defining drama ensues. Editing Walker's last novel, which the author reworked for nearly two decades, Carmen Pearson has found indications that the Chekhov play had in fact been a template that Walker contemporized...