The Lost Garden - Tapa dura

A mesmeric story of love, loss and longing set in wartime England narrated by Gwen, a lonely mid-30s woman who works at the Royal Horticultural Society. She leaves London to lead a clutch of Land Girls who will grow food in the grounds of a neglected manor house in Devon. Always isolated in her life, Gwen is awkward with people - but she is befriended by a Canadian officer awaiting his posting and a frail, free-spirited girl whose fianc is missing in action. Through them and the 'lost' garden she has stumbled across, Gwen finally discovers her own profound capacity for love even though there is no happy ending. This is a beautiful, delicately fashioned novel by a leading Canadian writer and poet certain to win well-deserved plaudits from the critics.

It's Spring 1941 and London is being destroyed by the Blitz. Gwen Davis, a young horticulturalist, leaves the city for the Devon countryside. In charge of a troop of landgirls, her job is to rebuild the grounds of a neglected estate to grow food for the home front. The beautiful manor is far removed from the fighting but Gwen has her own battles - as she struggles with her shyness and fear of intimacy to create a community among her girls. Then Gwen meets two people who will change her life forever. Raley, a Canadian officer awaiting posting to the front with his men and Jane, a frail, free spirit whose fiance is missing in action. Through them, and the beautiful 'lost' garden that she stumbles upon, she finds a flowering of a different sort - her own profound capacity for love, even in the face of pain. As the harsh realities of war start to intrude, Gwen finds herself swept up into a world of passion and feeling that she never imagined. Through Raley and Jane, she comes at last to understand the unbelievable joy and unbearable risks of love. THE LOST GARDEN is a triumph of storytelling, a novel so delicately wrought, so exquisite in its rendering of loss that it takes your breath - and your heart - away.