Eve’s Garden

A tragedy involving her best friend and a mystery concerning the grandmother she never met drives Eve Gates to flee the mill town where she was born for New York, Paris, all the places she has conjured through her love of reading—only to be called back by family illnesses. Now she must decide whether she will settle back into her old home town or move into the larger literary world she has always craved. If she stays, can a delightful romance in a small-minded community provide a large-enough window on life? If she goes, will she ever resolve the mystery that her mother and aunts guard so closely?

Told by three generations, Eve's story evokes the power of childhood friendships and family ties, the prejudices that fester in the human heart, and the courage it takes to free ourselves from the past.

“. . . Debut novelist Glenda Bailey-Mershon writes prose so evocative that it would pass for poetry, and her eye for color, light and humanity illuminates a rare and neglected corner of our shared American history.” —Janis Owens, author of American Ghost

"I love the scope of this novel. I love its lushness and lyricism . . . that time and again the writing lifts o_ the page: transcendent and true and completely compelling . . . ." — Connie May Fowler, author of Before Women Had Wings and How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly