In spring 1941, when London is under attack, Gwen Davis escapes the city for Devon, where she will instruct young girls in growing crops for the Home Front. There, she 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 but free spirit whose fiancé is missing in action. Through them, Gwen comes to understand the unbelievable joy and the unbearable risks of love. Called “exquisite” by The New York Times, this beautifully nuanced novel received rave reviews around the world.

HELEN HUMPHREYS’ last novel, The Reinvention Of Love, was a national bestseller. Coventry was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, a Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year and a finalist for the Trillium Book Award. Humphreys won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Prize for Afterimage and the Toronto Book Award for Leaving Earth. Her much-loved novel The Lost Garden was a Canada Reads selection. The recipient of the Harbourfront Festival Prize for literary excellence, Humphreys lives in Kingston, Ontario.

WEB: HHUMPHREYS.COM
FACEBOOK: HELEN HUMPHREYS

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The Lost Garden

by naomibrun

On a windy spring day in 1941, horticulturalist Gwen Davis says goodbye to a city she has loved for a decade. There is very little in London for Gwen any more; bombs have destroyed the places that were so important to her, cancer has taken her mother’s life, and the newspapers have declared that her literary heroine, Virginia Woolf, is missing, presumed dead. Frustrated by the emptiness of wartime London, Gwen decides to leave. She volunteers to teach a group of Land Army girls to grow crops for the war effort, and is posted to a neglected country estate in Devon.

Gwen arrives a week late. The girls have settled in comfortably, and with little else to do, they while away their time with the soldiers who have been billeted at the house. So far, they have looked to the authoritative Jane for direction, and are less than enthused about the appearance of a socially awkward supervisor. Gradually, with help from Jane and Commanding Officer Raley, Gwen learns how to gain the girls’ loyalty and inspire them to contribute their talents. Under Gwen’s guidance, the girls grow potatoes, raise livestock, and restore the estate gardens to their former glory. When the girls are working, Gwen familiarizes herself with the grounds. She stumbles upon a forgotten garden planned around themes of love, and as she works diligently to revive it, she allows its messages to take root in her soul. And in the evenings, they all gather together to listen to the news on the radio, remember their former lives, and find ways to move through a very uncertain time.

Written in a beautifully poetic voice, this tale of love, loss and renewal during wartime will appeal to readers of Jane Urquhart and Elizabeth Hay.

This review is posted on my blog: www.theteatimereader.wordpress.com