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From bestselling, award-winning author Nina LaCour comes a sweeping family saga about self-discovery and love in all forms, inspired by the author's Creole roots.
New Orleans, 1944. Odette has always been one of the Honore sisters, glamorous and admired in their Creole community. But while Odette's older sisters are content to be wives and mothers, Odette has always wanted something else. It is only with her beloved cousin, Delphine, that Odette can tell her secret: she is in love with a woman, and she longs to be an artist. Delphine has a secret lover, too, a white man. In the hidden garden they've discovered, Odette and Delphine can dream of futures full of passion and freedom.
But five years later, Odette's life is nothing like what she'd planned. She's a widowed mother, living in Los Angeles, and she and Delphine, who is passing as white, have spiraled away from each other. When Delphine reaches a breaking point, Odette must make a shattering choice to try to hold her family together.
Profound and expansive, a story of love and longing, art and motherhood, friendship and desire, Meet Me in the Garden is a decades-spanning tour de force, inspired by the author's family and tracing the history of the Great Migration.
"A masterpiece that stands as an exceptional work of historical fiction…This character-driven beauty is an immersive, heartfelt triumph. It is a fantastic must-read that will resonate deeply with fans of Alice Walker and Brit Bennett." —Booklist (starred review)
"A gorgeous family saga that dares much and delivers on its promise… LaCour's sensuous novel is steeped in rich details of jazz, Creole cooking, and California glamour, and the characters are pitch-perfect." —Publishers Weekly
"A page-turner…Rich with cultural references…[A] sensitive examination of one woman's hard-fought journey to self-acceptance." —Kirkus Reviews
"Fans of Nella Larsen's Passing will enjoy this sympathetic tale about the secrets a family keeps among themselves and from each other as they grapple with societal prejudice during the mid-20th century." —Library Journal
This information about Meet Me in the Garden was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Nina LaCour was born in Oakland, California, received her undergraduate degree from San Francisco State University, and returned to Oakland to receive an MFA in Creative Writing at Mills College. Her graduate thesis became her first novel, Hold Still, which received a William C. Morris honor from the American Library Association. Her other novels include, The Disenchantments, Everything Leads to You, and the Michael L. Printz Award-winner We Are Okay. She is also the coauthor, with David Levithan, of You Know Me Well.
Still firmly rooted in the Bay Area, Nina loves cooking, gardening, and daytripping through the ever-inspiring regions of Northern California with her wife and their daughter.
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