Leota's Garden
   Francine Rivers
  1999 Tynedale House Publishers, Wheaton, Illinois USA
   ISBN: 084233498X


Once upon a time Leota's garden was a place of beauty. It was her refuge from the wounds of a devastating war & her sanctuary where she knelt before her loving God, prayed for her children & where her hope thrived & flowers bloomed.

Now, in the twilight of her life, imprisoned in her home by the ravages of age & abandoned by her children & their children, Leota is filled with sadness & voices her despair to her loving Father.

In time God brings a wind of change through unlikely agents: a college student who thinks he has all the answers, the granddaughter Leota never hoped to know & the feral garden.

I had not known of Francine Rivers' exquisite skill & sensitivity as a writer when I borrowed this book from the library. I was quickly & gladly engaged in her symphonic blend of authentic characters, irresistible relationships & unraveling family secrets.

While this is a novel, quite possibly a romance, it is also a book of prayers, a diary of consciousness, an exploration into the relationship between everyday people & their God.

It is also a book with some fine comedy, much peeling away of the layers of old hates & betrayals to find the honest pain & love beneath & the gradual coming of age of young women & men in the hectic modern world around the San Francisco Bay.

That Leota, in the last months of her life, becomes the catalyst & the mentor is just how the Hand of God or Cosmic Coincidences come about.

Leota's Garden is a lovely read, filled with the inner voices of struggling imperfect people: daughters raging against mothers; sons separating from fathers; everyone lying & lost from their God...until...

Until Annie drives over from San Francisco to her grandmother's house with a suitcase full of love & a heart full of pain. Until Corban arrives with his thesis writing itself in his brain & a callow heart on his arm. Until Leota's daughter, Annie's mother, arrives with her venom & self righteousness.

I was surprised by how much I loved Leota's Garden. Memories of an abandoned kitchen garden surfaced & I remembered the heartsease I gained from seeking refuge in it when boarding school life overwhelmed me. I was so glad to read a book in which a writer has composed an Angelus to the mending of the human spirit; a canticle of conversations with God.

Leota's daughter & son, raised by Leota's mother-in-law, have been warped & tainted against their mother most of their lives as children & adults. In an era when it was very bad form for a wife to work outside the house, Leota was also the only one bringing income to the family. Why? Well, you'll just have to read Leota's Garden - that secret must be told by Francine Rivers. Suffice is to tempt you with the thought that it wasn't only the Japanese-Americans who were feared here in America during WWII.

A redemptive & contemplative read, well written & rewarding.

More from Francine Rivers: A Voice in the Wind - a Campus Life Book of the Year winner; An Echo in the Darkness - a 1995 ECPA Gold Medallion finalist & recipient of the RWA Rita Award; As Sure As the Dawn - also a Rita Award; The Scarlet Thread - another Rita Award; The Atonement Child; Redeeming Love & The Last Sin Eater.
(09/10/00)

Rebecca