He lives a rootless, itinerant lifestyle, finally falling in with a British man who is employed collecting seeds and saplings to send back to England, where American plants - especially redwoods and sequoias - have become the rage on wealthy patrons' estates. The Goodenoughs are not a happy family and soon enough, their youngest child, Robert, flees the family home and travels west, eventually reaching California. A woman looks at an untitled painting by Albert Oehlen during the opening of an exhibition of works by German artists Georg Baselitz and Albert Oehlen in Reutlingen, Germany. Despite his dysfunctional family, Robert is a likeable character, who draws some larger than life people around him.

The only family member who shares his Apple interest and is side by side learning with his father, is son, Robert. This book appeals to me in these ways: set in America during the 1800's, frontier life, and it is (at least in part) about trees. After the very enjoyable The Virgin Blue, Falling Angels, Girl With a Pearl Earring and The Lady and the Unicorn - all of which cemented my fandom of Chevalier - came Burning Bright an utter snore of a novel that was not only badly conceived, but, for most readers, distracted and misfocused in plot and character.

The 38-year-old Swiss artist and atheist Christian Meier set the crescent on the peak to start a debate on the meaning of religious symbols - as summit crosses - on mountains.

His children are neglected, ignored, and seemingly mere bystanders in his escalating war with his wife. However, I felt that unacceptable though this might be to 21st Century sensibilities, it did ring true. I wanted the story to continue on, another fifty pages would have been great; but I can understand why Chevalier chose to end the book where she did.

We follow him as he makes his way across America in the mid 1800's, and eventually to California where he becomes a gold miner and finally a tree man like his father. But you can run only so far, even in America, and when Robert's past makes an unexpected appearance he must decide whether to strike out again or stake his own claim to a home at last. Five of the Goodenough children have already died, it seems inevitable that those won't be the last.