It's Spring 1941 and London is being destroyed by the Blitz. Gwen Davis, a young horticulturist, leaves the city for the Devon countryside. In charge of a troop of Land Girls, her job is to rebuild the grounds of a neglected estate. The manor is far removed from the fighting but Gwen has her own battles - as she struggles with her shyness and fear of intimacy to create a community among her girls. Gwen meets two people who will change her life. Raley, an officer awaiting posting to the front and Jane, a frail, free spirit whose fiance is missing in action. Through them, and the beautiful garden that she stumbles upon, she finds a flowering of a different sort - her own profound capacity for love, even in the face of pain.

'A beautifully crafted and bittersweet coming-of-age story...Humphreys writes with a poetic sensibility' Booklist 'Emotional ache, fear, loneliness, Humphreys evokes these sensations with unsettling clarity in her awesome novel ... Utterly beautiful' Now (Toronto)

Helen Humphreys is the author of 2 previous novels. She is the author of four books of poetry and her work has appeared around the world in many languages. She lives in Kingston, Ontario in Canada.