The Lost Garden

When I was growing up, I loved the story of the Secret Garden, not sure if it has to do with the secrecy of having a place you can go to that no one else does or if there is something about watching the things you plant grow and flourish into a thing of beauty, but lovers of that premise will love the newest novel from Katharine Swartz, The Lost Garden. It parallels two different time periods so it's hard to classify it as a contemporary or historical, because it is both.

One is contemporary present day involving the lives of Marin Ellis, who is now the caretaker of her half sister Rebecca after the death of her father and his second wife. Together they are embarking on a journey of sorts between finding a common place in their new relationship together that was thrust upon them by circumstance. Not having a starting place aside from having the same father, the age differences impact them as well, with Marin having to try to find a way to be not really a mother to Rebecca but one of authority in a way without the title, and at the same time, becoming a friend and sister as well. Their common ground at this point is when Rebecca insists on a clean start for her own life, as she is now a bit of a loner and doesn't want the stigma attached to her as something to be pitied by her friends at school and hopes for a new outlook on life with the purchase of a vicar's cottage in the village of Goswell, where they find a garden locked almost hidden behind a wall that has been clearly neglected.

As the two make plans to find a way to bring life back into their garden, they discover a long history to the ones that originally created it from the 1900's, when we learn that Eleanor Sanderson, who was the daughter of the Goswell's vicar who created this garden in an attempt to find healing and a new way of life after losing her brother Walter during the war. It will be a story that is timeless as it crosses the boundary of two different lives and two different periods in history that shows that life can begin again if you are willing to put the effort into what you value as important in your life. It can be quite life changing in remarkable ways.

I received The Lost Garden by Katharine Swartz compliments of Lion Hudson and Kregel Publications for my honest review. I did not receive any monetary compensation for my honest review aside from a free copy of this novel and the opinions contained are strictly my own. I absolutely loved this novel because I have found myself to be quite the gardener as well, and successfully have created two very different gardens over the past 10 years. For me, they are a place to understand what is really important, a place of birth, growth and beauty, and that is what you find in the two stories between the Ellis's and Sanderson's that almost everyone can find something they can relate to! I would rate this one a 4 out of 5 stars in my opinion and look to future novels from Katharine Swartz in the future. The Lost Garden is the second book in the Tales from Goswell series and for me, I'll be looking for The Vicar's Wife, the first book in this series! Katharine Swartz is also the name for Kate Hewitt, if you can't find her.

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The Lost Garden by Katharine Swartz

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To read more reviews on The Lost Garden, please visit Kregel Publication's website.