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Searching for George's Garden
Searching for George's Garden
Searching for George's Garden
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Searching for George's Garden

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EDEN [a state of perfect happiness or bliss]

A 104 year-old gardener dies, leaving a poetic legacy that transforms the lives of three people trapped in a cycle of their own grief.

Twenty-two years after she was taken from George's garden, Katy Bodden is returned to rural Mississippi. She does not recognize the house, or the new gardener that comes with it, but knows it is hers because George has died and brought her back to life. With only fragments of memory to aid her, she begins to recreate the garden of her childhood one painting at a time.

The wild things of nature that surround the house feel impenetrable until the earth begins to yield the bittersweet artifacts of its past. With the help of a cynical young pilot, the new gardener uncovers the remains of an unusual formal garden that comes to life in the sun. Katy thrives among the seashell paths and weeping trees, while they all wonder why and how George, at 104 years of age, built them.

Stuck in a place where nothing seems to make sense, the unlikely trio forms a bond that is made stronger by the gradual uncovering of their shameful truths. But when Katy finds her most prized childhood possession, she knows she must return to the last place she saw George alive to let him go for good – a place where someone has been waiting twenty-two years for her to come back. A confession is made about the not-so-random summer the three have spent together, which gives them all an opportunity to re-set time and choose what happens next.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherKay Spencer
Release dateOct 30, 2018
ISBN9781386482666
Searching for George's Garden
Author

Kay Spencer

Kay Spencer's debut novel, Searching for George's Garden, is a work of fiction inspired by memories of her childhood in the southern United States. Set in the present day, the story examines the transformation of life after loss. Several decades after leaving, Kay returned to the South where she makes her home in Atlanta, Georgia. She is a former freelance writer for film and video, an optioned screenwriter, and a novelist. Some of her travel essays and blog entries can be read at kayspencer.com. All but two of the characters in Searching for George's Garden are a products of the author's imagination. Yet, while the events of their later lives are entirely fictional, George Trotter and Adeline Brister were lifetime employees of the Hattiesburg family, babysitters and companions to Kay during much of the first five years of her life. She re-established her connection to Adeline, who dictated letters before her death at the age of 102 years, 3 months, and 28 days. George passed away before Kay could find him. He lived until the age of 98 years, 2 months, and 22 days. He built a good lizard cage.

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    Searching for George's Garden - Kay Spencer

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