Loving ways / Maurice Gee.

May, David and Alan Macpherson have the same father but different mothers, and their paths in life have been enormously different. The three have come together after thirty-five years at the Nelson orchard of their dying father, Robert Macpherson. The old tugmaster, domineering and earthy still, is being nursed by May's daughter, Heather, who also runs the orchard. A strange love exists between her and the old man. As summer runs into autumn and the apples are harvested, the desires and beliefs of the ill-matched siblings -- each, in some way, loving or loved -- are frustrated, satisfied, put to the test until, at last, a shocking act of violence brings their unlikely reunion to an end.

In an isolated inlet on New Zealand's South Island, a manipulative dying father sends for his second son, whom neither his other son nor his daughter has seen for 35 years. Alan turns up, a quiet, religious, former army officer, and is mysteriously attracted to his brother's estranged wife.