The Kew Gardens Girls
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- $7.500
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- $7.500
Descripción editorial
A heart-warming novel inspired by real life events, about the brave women during WWI who worked in the historic grounds of London's Kew Gardens.
Can the women of Kew keep the gardens alive in the midst of war?
London, 1916. England is at war. Desperate to help in whatever way they can, Ivy and Louisa enlist as gardeners at Kew, the Royal Botanic Gardens, taking on the jobs of the men who have gone to fight. Under their care, the gardens begin to flourish and become a safe haven for those seeking solace--but not everyone wants women working at Kew.
The pair begin to face challenges on the home front. When a tragedy overseas affects the people closest to them, can the women of Kew pull together to support themselves and their country through the darkest of times?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lovell, the pseudony of Kerry Barrett (The Smuggler's Daughter), debuts with an engrossing exploration of the suffrage movement in WWI-era London. In 1915, Louisa Taylor, 35, and 16-year-old Ivy Adams are hired to work at London's Kew Gardens to replace men who left for the war. Louisa and Ivy bond over their membership in the women's suffrage movement, a secret they keep from their employer, who remains bitter about the movement's role in setting a pavilion at Kew on fire. After Louisa shames their pacifist coworker Bernie Yorke by planting white feathers in his coat, as part of the "white feather campaign" against men suspected of not enlisting, Bernie loses his job and Ivy breaks with Louisa to help Bernie go into hiding and avoid conscription. Later, Louisa's guilt over exposing Bernie leads her to help him register as a conscientious objector and avoid the draft. Ivy and Louisa then join up with another Kew Gardens worker on a campaign for equal wages for the women gardeners, and support one another through the war's tragedies. Lovell expertly instills the fictional narrative with details of the discord in the suffrage movement between pacifists and militants, and the ill-treatment of men who refused to fight. Historical fans will devour this down-to-earth page-turner.
