The Cider House Rules (1999)

Plotzle Original · O20 · March 20, 2026 · Drama

Six plot descriptions for The Cider House Rules (1999). One is the real plot. Five are convincing fakes. Read them and guess which is real.

1. A young man leaves college and moves to rural Oregon to work at an orchard where he becomes involved with the owner's wife and their relationship quietly unfolds over one autumn.
2. A recovering alcoholic returns to his hometown and takes a job at a cider mill where the monotonous work allows him to reflect on the marriage he destroyed through years of neglect.
3. Two migrant workers develop an unexpected friendship while living in cramped quarters at an apple farm and one begins writing letters to the daughter he abandoned years earlier in Mexico.
4. A family-owned apple orchard in Vermont becomes the setting where three generations reconcile their differing values about land preservation and commercial development as harvest season approaches.
5. An elderly woman who inherited her father's cider business discovers he kept detailed journals revealing his extramarital affair and contemplates whether to share this information with her siblings before selling the property.
6. A young man raised in an orphanage learns medicine from the doctor who runs it, then leaves to work at an apple orchard where he experiences life beyond the institution that raised him.