The Cider House Rules recap

Homer Wells grows up in the St. Cloud's orphanage under Dr. Wilbur Larch, who delivers babies, arranges adoptions, and secretly performs abortions. Larch trains Homer as a doctor, but Homer refuses to perform abortions and leaves with young couple Candy Kendall and Wally Worthington for their family apple orchard, Ocean View. Homer becomes an orchard worker and falls in love with Candy. After Wally is reported missing in wartime, Homer and Candy have a son, Angel, whose parentage they conceal when Wally returns disabled and marries Candy. Years later, Rose Rose, one of the migrant pickers, becomes pregnant through abuse by her father. Homer performs an abortion for her, finally understanding the practical cost of his refusal. Rose kills her father and flees. When Larch dies, Homer accepts the medical identity Larch fabricated for him, leaves Ocean View, and returns to St. Cloud's. He takes Larch's place as physician and continues providing both obstetric care and safe abortions.

Homer Wells is born at the isolated St. Cloud's orphanage in Maine. Several attempted placements fail, and the boy repeatedly returns, making the institution his permanent home. Dr. Wilbur Larch runs St. Cloud's with Nurses Angela and Edna. In addition to delivering babies and arranging adoptions, Larch provides illegal abortions because he has seen the injuries and deaths caused when desperate women have no safe medical option. Homer grows into a useful assistant and receives an informal but rigorous medical education from Larch. He also forms a difficult bond with Melony, an older orphan who has little hope of being chosen by a family and expects Homer not to abandon her. Larch increasingly imagines Homer as his successor, although that future has never been freely chosen by the young man himself.

Under Larch's instruction, Homer becomes competent at obstetrics and understands the procedures performed at St. Cloud's. After seeing evidence of fetal development, however, he decides that he will not perform abortions. Larch regards this distinction as morally inconsistent: women come to the orphanage with different needs, and he believes a doctor must help rather than impose a private rule. Candy Kendall and Wally Worthington arrive from the coast seeking an abortion for Candy. The procedure is completed safely, and the couple's confident, affectionate life fascinates Homer. When they leave, Homer accepts their invitation to accompany them to Ocean View, the Worthington family apple orchard. His departure is both a break from Larch's planned future and a breach of his promise to Melony. For the first time, Homer enters adult life outside St. Cloud's without knowing whether his medical training will remain part of it.

Homer settles at Ocean View with Wally, Candy, Wally's mother Olive, and Candy's father Ray Kendall nearby. He learns orchard work and lobster fishing, and he becomes part of a seasonal community unlike the ordered isolation of St. Cloud's. His affection for Candy grows, though she and Wally are an established couple. The migrant picking crew is led by Mr. Rose and lives in the cider house. A posted list of rules has been written by people who neither sleep there nor share the workers' circumstances, and the crew resents being governed by it. Back at St. Cloud's, Larch maintains the fiction that Homer is pursuing formal medical training and begins constructing records that could eventually make that fiction useful. Melony leaves the orphanage and searches for Homer, driven as much by his broken promise as by affection. Homer continues to reject the career Larch designed while using the habits of care and observation that the doctor taught him.

War draws Wally away from Ocean View as a pilot. When his aircraft is lost, the family fears he is dead, and shared grief brings Homer and Candy into an affair. Candy becomes pregnant and goes to St. Cloud's with Homer. They return with the baby, Angel, presenting him as an orphan they have adopted rather than their biological son. Wally is eventually found alive but permanently disabled. Candy chooses to marry him, while Homer remains close to the family and helps raise Angel within the agreed story of his origins. The arrangement preserves the household but leaves Homer and Candy's attachment unresolved and makes secrecy part of Angel's upbringing. Years pass at the orchard. Larch continues caring for women and children at St. Cloud's while preparing a professional identity that could allow Homer to replace him despite Homer's lack of conventional credentials.

Angel grows up believing the account the adults have given him, with Wally, Candy, and Homer all central to his life. At Ocean View, Homer recognizes signs that Rose Rose is in serious trouble. She is pregnant, and the father is Mr. Rose, who has abused the authority he holds over her. Rose needs the procedure Homer has always said he will not provide. The crisis makes the cider-house rules more than a symbol: general commands written by outsiders cannot account for the danger faced by the people living under them. Homer must decide whether his personal prohibition matters more than the skill that could help Rose. Meanwhile Larch's health and dependence on ether are worsening, and St. Cloud's future remains uncertain. The false history he has created for a physician named Dr. Fuzzy Stone is intended to give Homer a route back whenever he is ready to accept it.

Homer performs an abortion for Rose Rose, ending the pregnancy caused by her father's abuse. When Mr. Rose threatens her again, Rose kills him with his own knife and leaves the orchard. Homer helps the workers describe the death as an accident, protecting her from pursuit. The choice forces him to acknowledge that his medical ability creates obligations that cannot be resolved by a rule of refusal. Dr. Larch dies after taking ether, and St. Cloud's urgently needs a new physician to keep both the orphanage and its medical services open. Larch's fabricated credentials for Dr. Fuzzy Stone make Homer a viable successor. Homer says goodbye to the complicated family he has made with Candy, Wally, and Angel and returns to the place where he grew up. Under the identity Larch prepared, he assumes charge of St. Cloud's. He now performs abortions as well as delivering babies and caring for orphans, accepting the full work he once divided into acceptable and unacceptable parts.

At Ocean View, Rose Rose reveals that she is pregnant by her father. Homer, who has long refused to perform abortions, recognizes that refusing her would abandon the medical responsibility Larch tried to teach him. He carries out the procedure safely. Rose later kills Mr. Rose when he threatens her again, then leaves the orchard; Homer protects her by helping present his death as an accident. News arrives that Dr. Larch has died from ether, leaving St. Cloud's without the doctor on whom its births, adoptions, and abortions depend. Larch has already created a false professional history for Homer under the name Dr. Fuzzy Stone, giving him a legal identity with which to take over. Homer finally accepts that his place is not determined by rules imposed from a distance but by the people whose needs he is equipped to meet. He leaves Candy, Wally, and Angel at Ocean View and returns to the orphanage. Assuming the identity Larch prepared, Homer becomes St. Cloud's physician and continues both parts of Larch's work: caring for children who are born and providing safe abortions to women who choose not to continue a pregnancy.