In An Italian Garden

Set in the magical gardens of Italy, where centuries of people have walked and dreamed, short stories that portray the strange, perilous, and unexpected moments that can change an entire future.Inventive and atmospheric, gardens are evocative places that combine wayward nature with intentional art, embodying our longings, fears, and hopes. Set in the historic and varied gardens of Italy, these stories catch ordinary people in extraordinary moments, when life seems charged with a peculiar energy. These special places act like portals in time, acquainting us with the otherworldly and with the most essential parts of the self. For the curious, they can be magical, bringing danger, but also the possibility of reinvigorating a stalled life.A failed academic on a garden tour wavers between the lure of her delusions and the promise of becoming someone new. A young mother faces a hard choice as she tries to survive in an Italian village on the eve of WWI. Facing an unwelcome moral test for a second time, a middle-aged woman knows what she does now will define her always. A disgruntled husband climbs on a boat and ends up somewhere entirely unexpected. Intimate, lyrical, compelling, ranging from the geometric gardens of the Medici to the cultivated wildernesses of the Italian Lakes, this collection illuminates ordinary people trying to create a meaningful path forward, highlighting those fraught and fragile moments when life can go on, or wildly veer off course, into a future that is uncharted, unexpected, and free.