The
Salt Garden
A Novel
Eleanor Ashgrove
A Novel · 2019
The Salt Garden
Three generations of the Halloran family return to the walled coastal garden that raised them — for one last summer, one last harvest, and the secret the soil has kept for fifty years.
About This Book
The garden behind Greycombe House has fed four generations and buried one truth. When the family gathers to sell the estate, June Halloran — botanist, skeptic, keeper of lists — discovers her late grandmother's planting journal, and every entry points to the summer of 1969.
Told across one salt-scented season, The Salt Garden moves between glasshouse and shoreline, between what families say at lunch and what they write down after midnight. It is a novel about inheritance in all its forms: land, recipes, grudges, and the stubborn perennials of love.
Inside
- I. The Last Planting
- II. Glasshouse Weather
- III. What the Tide Takes
- IV. The Journal of M. Halloran
- V. Harvest Supper
An Excerpt
“June had believed, until that week, that a garden was a record of intentions. She understood now that it was a record of survivals — what lived through neglect, what reseeded itself in the dark, what came back salt-burned and stubborn every single spring.”
— From Chapter IV, “The Journal of M. Halloran”
Details
- Genre
- Literary fiction / family saga
- Published
- 2019 · Ashgrove Letters
- Pages
- 342
- Formats
- Hardcover, ebook, audiobook
What Readers Say
“I could smell the sea on every page. The rare family novel with no villains — only weather.”
— Seaside Book Club, group read
“Finished it on the porch and sat still for an hour afterward.”
— Reader letter