On her twenty-first birthday in 1930, Nell O'Connor learns she was a foundling discovered on a ship arriving in Australia from England two decades earlier. Following her father's death, she travels to the Cornish coast to find Blackhurst Manor, the estate of the Mountrachet family. The story follows three timelines: Nell’s search for her origins, the life of an Victorian authoress named Eliza Makepeace who lived at the manor, and the modern efforts of Nell’s granddaughter, Cassandra, to solve the mystery of a hidden, walled garden and a long-hidden identity.
Readers of multi-generational historical fiction find value in the intricate puzzle of family secrets and lost legacies. The book serves those who enjoy atmospheric settings where old manor houses and forgotten diaries hold the keys to ancestral puzzles. A reader finishes the story with a clear understanding of how past betrayals ripple through three generations, finally seeing how the hidden garden connects the separate lives of three different women.
Balanced in tone; a moderate read.
Best for readers like The Escapist Adventurer. Which reader are you?
Insights from The Forgotten Garden
“She had been a child of the world, and now she was a child of the wind.”
Nell spent her whole life feeling like a puzzle with missing pieces. Finding out you were adopted at twenty one changes every memory you own.
“The stories were her lifeblood.”
Eliza wrote those dark fairy tales to survive the Blackhurst mansion. I realized those stories were her only way to tell the truth about the Mountrachet family.
“The past is a ghost that doesn't know it's dead.”
Cassandra finally goes to Cornwall to finish what her grandmother started. It made me think about how we carry our ancestors' unfinished business in our bones.
Linus and Eliza found a weird kind of peace in that hidden garden. Sometimes the only way to be yourself is to hide from the rest of the world.
- Published
- 2008
- Publisher
- Atria
- ISBN
- 9781416572060
- Language
- EN
