The Forgotten Garden

This was a beautiful, wonderful book once I finally got into it.  The story jumps back and forth between characters and time periods, so the first two hundred pages were confusing as I tried to figure out what was happening and when it was happening.

However, I loved it in the end.

In the year 1913, a four-year old girl is mysteriously left alone on a ship bound for Australia from England.  A married man finds her on the wharf in Australia and takes her home until he and his wife can figure out where she came from.  The little girl doesn't remember anything, not even her name.  No one ever turns up to claim the child, and the couple never hears anything of a missing girl.  They decide to name her Nell and keep her until someone shows up to claim her.  The years go by and it is Nell's 16th birthday.  Her father tells her the truth about her past and Nell's life is changed forever.

Kate Morton takes the reader on a wonderful journey through the century and between two continents as the mystery unravels of how Nell came to be all alone on that wharf in Australia.

I can't say much more about the story without giving away any of the secrets, but I will include one sentence I especially enjoyed.  This author has a lovely way of writing description and her imagery is vivid and beautiful:  "This was the London of Eliza Makepeace, the London Cassandra had read about in Nell's notebook, of mist-filled streets and looming horses, glowing lamps that materialized, then vanished again into the fog-laden haze (132)."

I will have to say that a certain character's story line in the early 1900's London was my favorite.  It reminded me faintly of a Dicken's novel with the poor struggling orphans and all.  I also appreciated and related to this same character as she became older and transformed her wild imagination and gift of story-telling into fairytales (which are included in the book.)

This is one of those books that makes you just want to sit for hours and read without stopping.  I always appreciate a book like that because they don't come along often.

Five Stars!