The Forgotten Garden

Cassandra is grieving. Her grandmother Nell, whom she loved dearly, has just died, and a tragic accident ten years earlier had already shaken her life. She feels she has lost everything that mattered to her.

Then Nell's will brings a surprise: an unexpected bequest that unsettles what Cassandra thought she knew about herself and her family. Among the things she inherits is a book of dark fairy tales written by Eliza Makepeace, a Victorian authoress who vanished in the early twentieth century under circumstances no one has explained.

Cassandra sets out to follow the path Nell once took, looking for the truth about their family and its past. The trail runs through a foundling, a secret garden, an aristocratic family and a love that was denied. Each of these is a piece of a mystery that reaches back across generations.

This is a family mystery that moves between past and present, with a atmospheric, secretive mood. Memory and buried history drive the plot, and the pace suits a reader who likes to piece things together slowly. Cassandra's search is also a way back into her own life, and the book keeps that thread close to the puzzle.