One of Irving’s most political novels, The Cider House Rules explores the contentious issue of abortion, as well as those of addiction, racism, and rejection. Dr. Wilbur Larch is the ether-addicted and childless proprietor of the St. Clouds Orphanage in 1920s Maine. After many years witnessing unwanted children and deaths from backstreet abortions, Dr. Larch starts an illegal, and safe, abortion clinic at the orphanage. Homer Wells is one of the orphans, a bright and enterprising boy who appears to be inexplicably unadoptable, being returned again and again to the orphanage from would-be families. Larch realizes Homer will probably spend his life in the orphanage and decides to train him to take over his profession as St. Clouds’ illegal abortionist.
But Homer does not agree with abortion, and decides instead to take a trip with a young couple, from which he never returns. Dr. Larch must come to terms with Homer’s reluctance both to follow his professional footsteps and to return to St. Clouds, while Homer’s life develops complications of its own as love, and World War II, intervene. In dealing with the racism of the time, the novel’s title derives from a list of rules Homer posts in the Cider House. These are supposed to keep order and safety among the black migrant workers who come to pick apples, but Homer is unaware that these rules are resented by the workers. Along with Homer, the reader comes to realize that the real rules of the Cider House, and of life, are never written down.
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