This is a lovely little story about a romance between two mature people who love to garden. The gardens described are beautiful and inspire envy. The sex and romance of the story are inextricably linked to rocks, dirt and growing things. You've got to love gardens to appreciate this book, the two gardens are really the main characters of the book, our hero and heroine only a subplot. The romance between Tristan and Maggie is wonderfully real and touches on the issues that come up when both have adult children and one is recovering from a stroke.
The ending is rather pat, and some characters' behaviors seem inconsistent to achieve this pat ending. As is a danger in a book by someone who loves nature, the writing is sometimes ponderously florid: "Š a remarkable stone that was the offspring of a shotgun marriage, first forged in some Paleozoic cauldron when an ocean plate took a dive into a trench and come up with scraps from which the future Appalachian and Caledonian mountains would be built." I'm glad I read this book, but I'm not sure I'd read it again. -EF
