What does it take to overcome betrayal?
Ceredigion, 12th Century Wales: When her beloved grandmother dies, the orphan Tanwen labors through the long summer days to create the garden which will allow her to survive the fast approaching winter. But as autumn descends, dark rains arrive. The garden drowns in a welter of rotting leeks and beans. Tanwen, just seven and alone, must leave the only home she's known behind. She sets out on the dangerous road to a distant town where she believes her dead mother's estranged sister abides.
The determined child survives, but she is always an outsider in her aunt's home and town. As a grown woman, she makes an unusual, even rash, choice. The consequences will be beyond her imagining. Tanwen's journeys will take her to the lovely manor Adpar, her first true home, then to the dreaded borders of the enemy English and to the darkest challenges a woman could face. But in her trek through the deep forests and mountains of Wales, and her precarious new life in the border lord's castle at Ludelaue, she will find hope too, as she learns a new way to create and to love. For a new and most necessary garden will be required of her. And this garden must not fail.
Set against the turmoil of border wars and the rise of an independent Wales, A Necessary Garden tells the intertwining stories of Tanwen, her noble lover Owain, the enigmatic mapmaker and spy Gethin, and the beloved child Bryn. An adventure, a romance, a tale of a mother's love, and an exploration of the mysterious powers of nature and art, this atmospheric and compelling novel reveals one woman's search for a path beyond betrayal. What does it take to find the courage and resources to make oneself anew?
