Book - The Forgotten Garden

The Forgotten Garden - My First Kate Morton Book

It was January 2011. My paper planner and mental planner were overflowing with todos. An unanticipated but eagerly anticipated move to the Seattle area had overtaken our lives. We made our final decision in December and planned to be out of our home of 34 years by the first of March - WOW! In addition, I was attending a week long genealogy course in Salt Lake City - paid for before we knew we were moving - and I was going to the Kings for a few days after Salt Lake City to stay with the children while Michael and Pamela took a quick vacation. All wonderful things - part of our abundant life. I purchased "The Forgotten Garden" for my plane rides. I'd seen it in an airport bookstore a few months before and thought it would be good reading for my upcoming trip. 

One day early in January I made the mistake of thinking - I'll just read the first few pages of "The Forgotten Garden" to see if I wanted to take the book on the plane. I was immediately pulled into this wonderful story. It was a page turner for me. So much so, that I finished the book before my trip and had to find another one to take with me!

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from goodreads.com

"... a novel that takes the reader on an unforgettable journey through generations and across continents as two women try to uncover their family’s secret past.

A tiny girl is abandoned on a ship headed for Australia in 1913. She arrives completely alone with nothing but a small suitcase containing a few clothes and a single book—a beautiful volume of fairy tales. She is taken in by the dockmaster and his wife and raised as their own. On her twenty-first birthday, they tell her the truth, and with her sense of self shattered and very little to go on, "Nell" sets out to trace her real identity. Her quest leads her to Blackhurst Manor on the Cornish coast and the secrets of the doomed Mountrachet family. But it is not until her granddaughter, Cassandra, takes up the search after Nell’s death that all the pieces of the puzzle are assembled. A spellbinding tale of mystery and self-discovery,The Forgotten Garden will take hold of your imagination and never let go."

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I've read the book a number of times and it now has a place on my shelf of favorites - books I will read again and again.

I have several reactions to this book. On one level it was a page turner, "I'm really enjoying this story" On another level I stop to ask myself why characters acted the way they did and things fall apart a bit if I analyze it too carefully. Then I read the book again to see if I can figure out some of those questions.

The author raises interesting questions about what constitutes family - the persons who provided the DNA or the people who raised you, if they happen to be different. Also - how do we put our past into perspective as we change and make a future for ourselves and those we love?

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Passages I marked

"For with Rose's letter, the color of Eliza's world had changed. Like the kaleidoscope in the nursery that had so delighted her when she first came to Blackhurst, one twist and the same pieces were rearranged to create a vastly different picture. Where a week ago she had felt secure, enveloped in the certainty that she and Rose were irrevocably tied, now she feared herself alone again." (367)

Cassandra visited the Victoria and Albert Museum. "A giant mausoleum of the past. Inside, she knew, were rooms and rooms, each one full of history. Thousands of items, out of time and place, reverberating quietly with the joys and traumas of forgotten lives." (146) 

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If you read this book, let me know what you think about it!