A Bit of Magic in A Garden of Secrets

THE MEMORY GARDEN by Mary Rickert from Sourcebooks in an old run down Victorian outside of town lived Nan and her daughter Bay.  Bay is not Nan’s biological daughter in fact she was left at her door when she was a baby.  Nan had yearned for a baby so she did not question its appearance and just got down to the business of raising Bay.

Nan was accustomed to townsfolk leaving things for her but over the years that turned into shoes. Nan would put different varieties of plants in each pair and lovingly maintained this garden over the years.  For years Nan and Bay and the garden thrived but things started to charge. Bay was beginning to question being different and an outcast, she also started seeing and talking to ghosts in the garden. Nan took this as a message/warning and determined it was time to share some secrets with Bay.

Since their nuclear family had just been the two of them for so long Nan felt she needed some reinforcements. One for Bay in case something where to happen to her after all she was not young anymore.  And two once secrets were revealed to Bay she might need someone to look after her.

So Nan invites her two best friends Mavis to come to her home.  That certainly spices things up as these two women are a bit unusual.  Three women who were part of something that broke them apart long ago, yet they come together in later lives and find their friendship is still strong and blooming.

There is a little surprise for readers at the start of each chapter that makes perfect sense with the garden taking a central role in Rickert’s novel. Overall, I did not fall in love with this book the way I expected and at times it dragged for me.  But the many touches that I did enjoy certainly made me glad to have read THE MEMORY GARDEN.