The Wishing Garden

Mary Cranford is grown up now, but she's having vivid memories of hearing her parents fight as a child. That's mostly because she's recently moved back into her childhood home with her father. Her husband, Simon, and one of her twin daughters, Isabelle, were killed in a car accident. Mary is lucky to have her sweet daughter Adrienne still. Unfortunately Mary's father is very prejudiced against people with Latino backgrounds and Isabelle and Adrienne are both Latina, so he treats Adrienne very unkindly. This is hard for Mary to bear, so she tries very hard to keep Adrienne away from her grandfather and not to have to spend very much time with him herself. This is not to difficult because he is very sick and basically bound to his bed. Mary is concerned about her mother's garden. Her mother loved her garden, but since she died 4 years earlier, no one has cared for it and it's fallen into disrepair. Mary convinces her father that finding a gardener for her mother's garden would be a good idea, if only for the purposes of selling their house. While interviewing gardeners, Mary meets Whit, a Latino gardener who just feels right for the job. Mary quickly becomes falling in love, but he's a decade younger and he's got a past that's not very pretty. Can Mary trust her heart, or does she need to follow her head?


I had a really hard time getting into this story. I'd have to say it was not really one of my favorites, especially after Passage on the Titanic. The characters were okay, but it didn't feel as though you really could "know" them. All in all, not my favorite!

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