Flower POWER!
TWO WOMEN, CENTURIES APART, FIND THEMSELVES CONNECTED BY A PLANT
If you love gardens and are interested in history, then this novel is definitely one for your to-read pile as it weaves an engaging tale around a fascinating era of botanical adventuring and discovery. With a dual timeline, it is full of colour, drama and mystery, and features two strong female characters.
Elizabeth Trebithick, a wilful young woman growing up in Victorian England, is the botanist’s daughter of the title. A talented artist, she loves to make sketches and paintings of the plant specimens her father brings back from his explorations in faraway lands.
But as her father lies dying, he charges Elizabeth with a difficult and dangerous task. She must travel to the exotic wilderness of South America in his stead and find a mythical bloom called the Devil’s Trumpet. This plant is highly poisonous but also said to have miraculous healing powers, and there are plenty of others wanting it, including a scoundrel by the name of Mr Chegwidden who plans to sell it to the highest bidder.
In the modern-day part of the story, a young horticulturalist called Anna has inherited her grandmother’s old house in Sydney. As she renovates it, she makes a discovery – a battered notebook and a decorative metal box that contains an album of exquisite botanical illustrations, a photograph, a pressed flower and a bag of strange seeds. Intrigued, Anna sets about trying to find out more about these items, who they once belonged to and how they might have ended up in her family’s home.
Both women take journeys that will change their lives forever. Elizabeth, with her faithful servant Daisy, sets off on a long ocean voyage to Chile, while Anna follows the mysteries of the past all the way to London’s Kew Gardens.
This is a story laced with romance and adventure, plus deception and danger. The two separate strands weave together, of course, but still there are enough shocks and surprises along the way to keep those pages turning.
A lovely read.