Another Best Seller

I am in awe of Kate Morton for writing yet another novel that held my undivided interest from beginning to end.  If you haven’t read

– The House at Riverton

– The Forgotten Garden

– The Distant Hours

– The Secret Keeper

just pick one and get started.  They’re all great stories.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the book description from Amazon:

From the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of The Distant Hours, The Forgotten Garden, and The House at Riverton, a spellbinding new novel filled with mystery, thievery, murder, and enduring love.

During a summer party at the family farm in the English countryside, sixteen-year-old Laurel Nicolson has escaped to her childhood tree house and is happily dreaming of the future. She spies a stranger coming up the long road to the farm and watches as her mother speaks to him. Before the afternoon is over, Laurel will witness a shocking crime. A crime that challenges everything she knows about her family and especially her mother, Dorothy—her vivacious, loving, nearly perfect mother.

Now, fifty years later, Laurel is a successful and well-regarded actress living in London. The family is gathering at Greenacres farm for Dorothy’s ninetieth birthday. Realizing that this may be her last chance, Laurel searches for answers to the questions that still haunt her from that long-ago day, answers that can only be found in Dorothy’s past.

The history and the family secrets are fun, the characters are strong, her writing is a treat to read.  Over four hundred pages flew by, layer upon layer of the story revealed, past to present and places in between until the final mystery was solved.

If you’re not hooked yet, read the excerpt on Amazon.  And I’ll see you later – 450 pages later I expect.

Killer Pollen?

Is that what attacked me in April?  I’m still trying to figure out what made me so sick and ultimately caused bacterial pneumonia.  Apparently I still sound funny and nasal, although I am no longer breathing like Darth Vader.

Old people sooooo love to talk about their maladies.

What I’m actually here for is to sing the praises of Kate Morden and “The Forgotten Garden”.  Just a delightful book from beginning to end, even though it began at the beginning and almost immediately flew to the end;  and then hit random chronological spots here there and everywhere as the book progressed until finally getting the mystery solved.

Whew.  I usually am not a big fan of hopping around all over the place in a story, although from my writing you might not have grasped that fact.  But while reading this book it seemed perfectly fine and natural to me to jump from 1913 to 1930 to 2005 to 1976 and all the way back and forward again without ever getting myself all muddled up and confused.  Through generations and across continents.  A lovely and splendid journey.

I wanted to post a little blurb about it while I still have the beautiful peaceful feeling of continuity it gave me.  How weird is that, all things considered.  But when one life ends, so much of it continues on in the people who are left behind; so much of the life of someone in the future can be felt before it even starts.  And then when at last you walk into the light it all comes clear.  Well, anyway, I’m hoping that’s what happens. The final epiphany.

Kind of makes me want to research the past and dig up a few scandals.  But thankfully for my family I lack the necessary ambition, so their secrets are safe with me.  (Or from me.)  I’d just jump to conclusions and make things up if the facts proved elusive.  Should have been a historian I guess.

And to skip back to the beginning suddenly for no apparent reason, never mind about the pollen.  I think it was killer snow mold.