I must confess I strayed from my commitment to finish all the books I was simultaneously reading and instead, picked up yet another, which I could not then put down.
Winter Garden weaves together the past and present (love me that historical fiction!) as it lays out the lives of Meredith Whitson, her sister, Nina, and their complicated relationships (aren't they all) with their parents. Their mother, Anya: cold and distant. The girls have never been able to please her or make her happy and quit trying a long time ago, never quite healing from the scars her withheld love has imprinted on them. Their father, Evan: warm, loving, always trying to make up for his wife's painful silence.
When their father falls gravely ill, he makes a last attempt to pull his wife and daughters together using a fairy tale Anya told the girls in their childhood, set in her native Russia. Through Anya's reluctant retelling of this tale, the girls begin to unravel the mystery that is their mother, learning about a history they never knew was part of them and breaking the barriers they've put up around their hearts in the process.
BOTTOM LINE: Have Kleenex at hand!
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