Welcome to Bascomb, North Carolina, where it seems that where

it seems everyone has a story to tell about the Waverley women. The old

house that's been in the family for generations, the walled garden that

mysteriously blooms year round, the rumors and innuendoes of dangerous

loves and tragic passions. Eccentric, reclusive, or renegade, there's not a

one that wasn't somehow touched by magic.

As the town's successful caterer, Claire has always clung closely to the

Waverleys' roots in their enchanted soil, tending the family garden from

which she makes her much sought-after delicacies. She has everything she

thinks she needs - until one day she finds a vine of ivy creeping into her

garden and knows that everything is about to change.

Then her prodigal sister Sydney arrives with her five-year-old daughter and

a dark secret she hopes to keep well hidden. And suddenly Claire's

carefully tended life is about to run gloriously out of control.

Sarah Addison Allen's beguiling and luminous new novel is sure to cast its

spell over even the most sceptical heart. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

`Business was doing well, because all the locals knew that

dishes made from the flowers that grew around the apple tree in the

Waverley garden could affect the eater in curious ways. The biscuits with

lilac jelly the Ladies Aid ordered for their meetings once a month gave

them the ability to keep secrets. The fried dandelion buds over

marigold-petal rice, stuffed pumpkin blossoms, and rose-hip soup ensured

your company would notice only the beauty of your home and never the flaws

. . . ' --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Every smiley moon, without fail, Claire dreamed of her childhood.

She always tried to stay awake those nights when the stars winked and the

moon was just a cresting sliver smiling provocatively down at the world,

the way pretty women on vintage billboards used to smile as they sold

cigarettes and limeade. On those nights in the summer, Claire would garden

by the light of the solar-powered footpath lamps, weeding and trimming the

night bloomers - the moon vine and the angel's trumpet, the night jasmine

and the flowering tobacco. Those weren't a party of the Waverley legacy of

edible flowers, but sleepless as she often was, Claire had added flowers to

the garden to give her something to do at night when she was so wound up

that frustration singed the edge of her nightgown and she set tiny fires

with her fingertips.

What she dreamed of was always the same. Long roads like snakes with

no tails. Sleeping in the car at night while her mother met men in bars

and honky-tonks. Being a lookout while her mother stole shampoo and

deodorant and lipstick and sometimes a candy bar for Claire at Shop-and-Gos

around the Midwest. Then, just before she woke up, her sister, Sydney,

always appeared in a halo of light. Lorelei held Sydney and ran to the

Waverley home in Bascom, and the only reason Claire was able to go with

them was because she was holding tight to her mother's leg and wouldn't let

go.

That morning, when Claire woke up in the backyard garden, she tasted

regret in her mouth. With a frown, she spit it out. She was sorry for

the way she'd treated her sister as a child. But the six years of Claire's

life before Sydney's arrival had been fraught with the constant fear of

being caught, of being hurt, of not having enough food or gas or warm

clothes for the winter. Her mother always came through but always at the

last minute. Ultimately, they were never caught and Claire was never hurt

and, when the first cold snap signalled the changing colors of the leaves,

her mother magically produced blue mittens with white snowflakes on them

and pink thermal underwear to wear under jeans and a cap with a droopy ball

on top. That life on the run had been good enough for Claire, but Lorelei

obviously thought Sydney deserved better, that Sydney deserved to be born

with roots. And the small scared child in Claire hadn't been able to

forgive her.

Picking up the clippers and the trowel from the ground beside her, she

stood stiffly and walked in the dawning fog toward the shed. She suddenly

stopped. She turned and looked around. The garden was quiet and damp, the

temperamental apple tree at the back of the lot shivering slightly as if

dreaming. Generations of Waverleys had tended this garden. Their history

was in the soil, but so was their future. Something was about to happen,

something the garden wasn't ready to tell her yet. She would have to keep

a sharp eye out.

She went to the shed and carefully wiped the dew off the old tools

and hung them on their places on the wall. She closed and locked the heavy

gate door to the garden, then crossed the driveway at the back of the

ostentatious Queen Anne-style house she'd inherited from her grandmother.

Claire entered the room through the back, stopping in the sunroom

that had been turned into a drying and cleaning room for herbs and flowers.

It smelled strongly of lavender and peppermint, like walking into a

Christmas memory that didn't belong to her. She drew her dirty white

nightgown over her head, balled in up, and walked naked into the house. It

was going to be a busy day. She had a dinner party to cater that night,

and it was the last Tuesday in May, so she had to deliver her

end-of-the-month shipment of lilac and mint and rose-petal jellies and

nasturtium and chive-blossom vinegars to the farmers' market and to the

gourmet grocery store on the square, where the college kids from Orion

college would hang out after classes.

There was a knock at the door as Claire was pulling her hair back

with combs. She went downstairs in a white eyelet sundress, still

barefooted. When she opened the door, she smiled at the fireplug of an old

lady standing on the porch.

Evanelle Franklin was seventy-nine years old, looked like she as one

hundred and twenty, yet still managed to walk a mile around the track at

Orion five days a week. Evanelle was a distant relation, a second or third

or fourteenth cousin, and she was the only other Waverley still living in

Bascom. Claire stuck to her like static, needing to feel a connection to

family after Sydney took off when she was eighteen and their grandmother

died the same year.

When Claire was young, Evanelle would stop by to give her a

Band-Aid hours before she scraped her knee, quarters for her and Sydney

long before the ice cream truck arrived, and a flashlight to put under her

pillow a full two weeks before lightning struck a tree down the street and

the entire neighbourhood was without power all night. When Evanelle

brought you something, you were usually going to need it sooner or later,

though that cat bed she gave Claire five years ago had yet to find its use.

Most people in town treated Evanelle kindly but with amusement, and even

Evanelle didn't take herself too seriously. But Claire knew there was

always something behind the strange gifts Evanelle brought. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.