A Garden Between Us

<p>A Garden Between Us by Darryl Martel</p><p><br>Set against the backdrop of 1960s London A Garden Between Us is a moving character driven novel that spans two decades and traces the hidden consequences of love class and silence within a well-to-do English family.</p><p><br>Seventeen-year-old Eleanor Whitmore lives under the watchful gaze of her upper-middle-class parents in a pristine Kensington home. When the family hires a gardener Albert Greene to restore their neglected garden Eleanor is quietly drawn to his soft-spoken son Thomas who joins him shortly after finishing school. What begins as a tentative friendship between Eleanor and Thomas deepens into a tender romance one that must be hidden from the disapproving eyes of her family.</p><p><br>When Eleanor becomes pregnant her world collapses. Her parents react with shame and calculation: she is sent away to a remote Mother and Baby Home where secrecy is policy and heartbreak is procedure. Alone Eleanor gives birth to a son who is taken from her arms before she can even name him.</p><p>Returning home she finds that Thomas and his father have been dismissed without explanation and life at the Whitmore house resumes as if nothing ever happened. The child is never mentioned again. Years pass. Eleanor watches her siblings marry and move on and eventually marries a kind man named James. Together they raise a daughter Rose. Though Eleanor builds a life of gentle stability she quietly carries the loss of her first child.</p><p><br>Over a decade later in 1976 Eleanor receives a letter that will change everything: her son now grown has found her. His name is Matthew. The reunion that follows is slow cautious and emotionally charged. Eleanor must reckon with the silence that defined so much of her early life and the son she never had the chance to know must decide whether he can be part of the family she has now.</p><p><br>As Christmas approaches Eleanor opens her home to Matthew his adoptive parents and the family she has since built. What began in secrecy ends in something profound a Christmas gathering that reunites forgives and heals.</p><p><br>A Garden Between Us is a story of generational reconciliation maternal love and the quiet courage it takes to remember what was lost and reclaim it.</p><p><br> </p>