From the author of The Rope Walk, the story of a woman's life in its twilight, as she looks back on both a harrowing childhood and the unaccountable love and happiness that emerged from it.
Ruth has always stood firmly beside her upstanding, brilliant husband, Peter, the legendary chief of the Derry School for boys. The childless couple has a unique, passionate bond which grew out of Ruth's arrival on his family doorstep as a young girl orphaned by tragedy. And though sometimes frustrated by her role as lifelong helpmeet, Ruth is awed by her good fortune in Peter. As the novel opens we see the Derry School in all its glorious New England fall colors and witness the loosening of the aging Peter's grasp--he will soon have to retire, and Ruth is wondering what they will do in their old age, separated from the school into which they have poured everything, including their savings. As the novel unfurls, it takes us back through their days and years, revealing the explosive spark and joy of their love--undiminished now in their seventies--and giving us a deeply felt portrait of a woman from the generation that quietly put individual dreams aside for the good of a partnership, twinned with the revelation of the surprising gift of the right man's love, which keeps giving to the end.

In the four months since Conrad Morrisey's beloved wife, Rose, died, he has let her cherished garden slide into neglect, just as he has stopped caring what he eats or wears. But there, in Rose's overgrown and unkempt garden, Conrad receives an unearthly visitor, familiar yet perplexing. What does this mean? What should he do? What would vivacious Rose have done?
She would not have kept it a secret, Conrad decides, so he begins to share his story. And suddenly he finds himself at the center of Rose's life in a way he'd never experienced, learning how she touched the lives of people he barely knew. These people, from a silent, damaged young woman to the twittering ladies of Rose's drama group, shape his own days as they make unlikely pilgrimages to the garden. Conrad had thought his life was over, but something vital has yet to happen, on the wings of Rose's last message of love.
Incandescent, quirky, and poignant, Rose's Garden is an unforgettable story of undying love.

From Publishers Weekly

When Conrad Morrissey's wife, Rose, dies after 50 years of marriage, it takes an angelic visit to save him from his grief. That is the familiar premise of Brown's sweet, gentle first novel, set in the small town of Laurel, N.H. Once the ghost of his dead father-in-law prompts Conrad to concern himself with the living instead of the dead, he discovers that Rose's mysterious friend Hero, a slightly retarded girl with whom she shared a love of gardening, has also been receiving instruction from the dead. "And what had it been to Hero? He could not guess, except to believe that her world had always been filled with voices, the spokesmen of recrimination and doubt." As rain threatens to obliterate Laurel's ancient dam, and the town itself, Conrad finds new meaning in the memory of his wife and in devotion to the White Mountains community where they both spent the best years of their lives. A town full of sympathetic characters, including the widowed neighbor who can only sleep when every light in the house is on, and the beleaguered editor of the local paper, round out this sensitive debut.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This quiet first novel, set in a tiny New Hampshire village in the White Mountains, concerns a small town's varied reactions to the grief of a newly widowed man. Conrad Morrisey lives for his wife, Rose, and his homing pigeons. When Rose dies after a prolonged illness, Conrad retreats into a shell of memory and reflection. Through these myriad reflections, the reader comes to know and like Rose and to understand why her husband loved her so dearly. During one of the novel's many significant thunderstorms, Conrad spies an angel in Rose's vegetable garden and is immediately shaken loose from his emotional inertia. He feels compelled to share the experience with anyone who will listen, and this changes his relationship with the world forever in ways he never imagined. Firmly grounded by a strong sense of place, three-dimensional characters, and poetic writing, Rose's Garden is a joy to visit. Beautiful, bittersweet, and always moving, it is highly recommended.?Bettie Alston Shea, Charlotte-Mecklenburg P.L., Charlotte, N.C.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.