Lonely and stagnating in a soulless job, thirty-seven-year-old Marin Ellis is in need of a new start â?? but she is not prepared for the one she is given, when, after her estranged father and his second wife die in a car accident, she is made guardian of her fifteen-year-old half-sister Rebecca. The half-sisters are practically strangers, and their life in Hampshire is stilted and strange. At Rebeccaâ??s pleading they move to the picturesque village of Goswell on the Cumbrian coast, settling into the charming Bower House on the edge of church property. When a door to a walled garden captures Rebeccaâ??s interest, Marin becomes determined to open it and discover what is hidden beneath the brambles. She enlists the help of local gardener Joss Fowler, and together they begin to uncover the gardenâ??s surprising secrets. In 1919, nineteen-year-old Eleanor Sanderson, daughter of Goswellâ??s vicar, is grieving the loss of her beloved brother Walter, killed just days before the Armistice was signed. As winter passes into spring, her mood remains bleak despite her attempts to alleviate the emptiness she feels. When her father decides to hire someone to help Eleanor restore the once beloved, but now neglected, vicarage gardens, she is enchanted by the possibility of a new gardenâ??and the gardener her father hires, Yorkshireman Jack Taylor. Jack understands the nature of Eleanorâ??s grief more than anyone else seems to, and as they spend time together, a surprisingâ??and unsuitableâ??friendship unfolds... The Lost Garden is a luminous novel about tragic secrets, the chance for forgi

Swartz, Katharine