THE FORGOTTEN GARDEN begins in around 1897, when ten-year-old Eliza Makepeace and her twin brother Sammy are trying to survive the brutal conditions of living in poverty in London. Their mother has recently died and both children are obliged to earn money so that they can pay their monthly rent to their landlady, who possesses the Dickensian name of Mrs. Swindle.
However, tragedy strikes when Sammy is killed by a spooked horse, leaving Eliza devastated by her brother’s loss. However, just as a “well-meaning” parish lady shows up, intent on caging Eliza in the local workhouse, her mother’s aristocratic family the Montrachet’s appears and takes her back to the family estate in Cornwall where her Aunt and Uncle are supposed to bring her up so that she can become a model English Miss and catch a husband.
Needless to say, things do not go according to plan.
Along with that narrative thread are two others. Nell is an Australian woman born in around 1909, who learns on her 21st birthday that she is not actually related to her mother and father. Instead, she showed up in Australia in 1913, on board a boat from England. The kindly harbormaster Hugh O’Connor, finding this waif of a three-year-old girl standing quite alone takes her home. And she never leaves. But when she receives the devastating news that her parents are not actually related to her, she goes to England in 1975 determined to find out more. However, this plan is ditched when her feckless daughter Leslie, dumps her eight-year-old daughter Cassandra into her care, and Nells’ life becomes consumed with caring for her granddaughter.
Thirty years later, in 2005, Cassandra goes to England to pick up where her grandmother left off, and finds a complicated tangle of a tale that consists of plenty of lies and secrets. But this 20-hour behemoth of a story comes to a satisfying conclusion, when Cassandra finally figures out exactly who Grandmother Nell is, and why “The Authoriess” (Eliza Makepeace) abandoned her on that ship that went to Australia.
This is an unputdownable book (yes I stayed up until 3 am to finish it.) Five Stars.
