Ghosts in the Garden: Reflections on Endings, Beginnings, and the Unearthing of Self [Hardcover]

Beth Kephart (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 10, 2005

National Book Award nominee Beth Kephart's new book is an enchanting midlife meditation on aging, identity, and memory set against the backdrop of Chanticleer garden in Pennsylvania. On the morning of her forty-first birthday, Kephart, a mother, wife, and writer pressured by deadlines, finds herself at Chanticleer, one of the world's most celebrated pleasure gardens. She knows little of the language of flowers. Week after week, she returns to Chanticleer, recalling her childhood self, mulling over legacy and soul, striking up friendships with gardeners and conversations with other visitors. Succored by the seasons and the weather, she finds the grace notes in approaching middle age. There are lessons in seeds, and she finds them. There are lessons in letting go. Kephart writes about questions we all ask ourselves: How do we remember who we used to be? How do we imagine who we'll become? Have we lived our lives as we set out to do? What legacies do we wish to leave behind? The book spans a two-year cycle, and each chapter is accompanied by a gorgeous black-and-white photograph of Chanticleer by William Sulit. Ghosts in the Garden pulses with possibility and purpose, with wisdom that is ageless and transcendent.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

On her 41st birthday, Kephart, feeling overwhelmed by deadlines, domestic worries and midlife, decides to visit the famed Chanticleer gardens, which are situated near her Philadelphia home, to reflect and remember. Against the serene backdrop of this splendid landscape, Kephart experiences something that "can happen to anyone anywhere—to anyone who takes a detour from routine and stops, at last, for answers to old questions." Sorting through memories, Kephart (author of two parenting books, one, A Slant of Sun, a National Book Award finalist) finds symbolic meaning in the soil, seeds and flowers of the garden, comparing their seasons and cycles to those of humankind. She muses on the potential of growth and evolution, associating moments in her life to events such as the popping open of seeds and bulbs in the spring. Over a two-year period, Kephart revisits Chanticleer, musing on the soul, identity and time, observing the world and questioning her past and present. Accompanied by stylish photos by Kephart's husband, William Sulit, these meditations will have readers pondering many big questions: What will I do with the next portion of my life? What will I count among my blessings? This pleasant book gently probes such issues, reminding readers of their universality.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Just as Thoreau went to the woods to live deliberately, so, too, does Kephart retreat to a garden to reflect on her life, letting nature itself reveal the nature of humanity. At 41 and firmly ensconced in the throes of middle age, Kephart discovers Chanticleer, a magical pleasure garden not ten minutes from her house in Philadelphia's bucolic Main Line suburbs. Not a day goes by that she doesn't visit there, letting her mind discover the joys and mysteries to be found amid unknown flowers and the work of unseen gardeners, a soothing retreat from the pressures of professional deadlines and anxieties of motherhood. With the soul of a poet, Kephart chooses her words carefully, thoughtfully, stringing them together like pearls on a chain, one inspired revelation leading to the next in a lyrical, graceful contemplation on the living of a purposeful life. With language so magical it begs to be read aloud, Kephart illuminates the beauty that lies within and without us all. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: New World Library (February 10, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1577314980
• ISBN-13: 978-1577314981
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,459,480 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Following the publication of five memoirs and FLOW, the autobiography of Philadelphia's Schuylkill River, I've had the great pleasure of turning my attention to young adult fiction. UNDERCOVER and HOUSE OF DANCE were both named a best of the year by Kirkus and Bank Street. NOTHING BUT GHOSTS, A HEART IS NOT A SIZE, and DANGEROUS NEIGHBORS were critically acclaimed. In October YOU ARE MY ONLY will be released by Egmont USA. Next summer, Philomel will release SMALL DAMAGES. I am at work on a prequel to DANGEROUS NEIGHBORS, a novel for adults, and a memoir about teaching. Please visit my blog: http://beth-kephart.blogspot.com/

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enchanting., March 21, 2005

By 

Gentle Reader (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ghosts in the Garden: Reflections on Endings, Beginnings, and the Unearthing of Self (Hardcover)

Kephart again uses her beautiful gift of prose to bring us these reflections from Chanticleer. I deliberately took my time with this book, for I wanted to savor each page. The accompanying images add to the peaceful feeling of the book. I highly recommend this book.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful, lyrical read - great Mothers Day gift, March 19, 2005

By 

Terry M. Downes "njterry0328" (NJ United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ghosts in the Garden: Reflections on Endings, Beginnings, and the Unearthing of Self (Hardcover)

This book is lovely. It is beautifully written, reflective - you want to take your time and savor it. The photos are a wonderful complement to the book. I think it would be a perfect Mothers Day gift. Make a cup of tea and read this book. I loved it.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Garden of Blossoming Words, March 21, 2006

By 

Zinta Aistars "Writer & Editor" (Portage, MI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ghosts in the Garden: Reflections on Endings, Beginnings, and the Unearthing of Self (Hardcover)

The author of this small book, that would so easily fit the hands while walking a garden, ready to open while perhaps sitting on a fallen log or stump or among flowerbeds, is a poet in prose. Kephart has written an ongoing essay, covering the seasons of a garden as she covers the changing seasons of her own life. On her 41st birthday, she has a sobering moment of realization. She is about to enter midlife with all its reassessments and transformation and growth, all the realizations of changing roles as wife, mother, woman, writer. Discovering the garden called Chanticleer near her Philadelphia home gives her contemplations a beautiful backdrop, if not a solid grounding to view herself as she views the natural world around her.

Kephart walks the paths of the public garden and observes, then translates poetically to us, her readers, how she gradually learns to accept the changes inevitable in life. She observes nature as she observes the gardeners themselves. On occasion, she takes with her on her walks her young son, other times her husband, who captures Chanticleer in his own art medium - photography - adding his black and white images to Kephart's text.

Perhaps one moment so captured that might sum up Kephart's process of midlife transformation is a short essay about the garden after a storm:

"The garden had been put in its place by weather, and so had the rest of us; we are so entirely miniscule in comparison to wind and rain and hail. We were aware of how everything was angled newly. Made jagged or raw. Thinned out. We were reminded of other storms that had blown in, then turned and vanished.

"On that day only the gardeners seem brave - hauling broken branches and clumps of errant leaves from wherever they had gotten to, straightening the stakes and invisible ties, suggesting, by the way they carried things, that the world would be made right again. The gardeners were muddy and burdened and resilient because love is the only chance a garden's got. For the moment, and in the moment. Now because of then."

The walk through Kephart's garden of words is a path well worth taking.