The Forgotten Garden

Another book club reject that I thoroughly enjoyed. The book is about Nell, who on her 21st birthday in the 1920s, is told that her parents aren't really her parents. Her father - a dockmaster in Australia - found her on the wharf at the age of 4, all alone with a child's suitcase containing a beautiful book of children's fairy tales and little else, with no memory of her family. He and his wife took her in and raised her as their own. Nell goes in search of her true history in the 1970's but isn't able to solve the mystery entirely before her death in 2005. The story skips between three eras - the early 1900s where the truth of her mystery childhood is slowly revealed, the 1970s where we find out what Nell discovered during her personal search, and 2005 when her granddaughter Cassandra goes in search of the full story after her Nell's death.

I definitely liked the earliest story line the best - it was all secret garden and full of cool and creepy characters. Sure there were a few too many deathbed revelations/confessions than were rightly believable, and things got a little away-with-the-faeries but the book is full of mystery and intrigue and Kate Morton tells a good story.