The Wishing Garden (Mass Market Paperback)

by Christy Yorke (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
HThere's magic in Yorke's second novel, magic in the prose, the details and the exquisite characterizations. Divorced advertising executive and Tarot-card reader Savannah Dawson takes her 15-year-old daughter, Emma, from their San Francisco home to Arizona so that they can spend time with Savannah's estranged mother, Maggie, and her father, Doug, who is dying of cancer. Then Savannah meets Jake, a secretive stranger who is building a special bench for her father's garden; at the same time, Emma meets Eli, the local bad boy who works for Jake. Although the relationships between these four characters form the basis for much of the drama in the story, the romantic elements remain secondary to the explorations of each individual's personality. Readers enter a world where poetry and soil speak for a dying man, where love can create as well as destroy and where all characters are complicit in each other's pain, either by choice or by chance. Yorke (Magic Spells) even has Jake's dog, Sasha, narrate some scenes, and those, together with the scenes revealing Maggie and Doug's difficult, complex, and ultimately loving relationship, are the most poignant in the book. Readers who enjoy contrary characters will especially prize the paradoxes in this well-executed novel. (Aug.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Savannah Dawson sees magic everywhere, whether at her job in advertising or while reading tarot. Her optimistic view is tested when she reads her own fortune and for the first time turns up a bad card. The cards prove prophetic when her mother calls and tells her to come home to Arizona because her father is dying. With great trepidation, Savannah and her teenage daughter, Emma, leave San Francisco. Although she loves her father, a devoted and gifted gardener, she has never gotten along with her negatively minded mother. When Savannah arrives, Jake, a strange man her mother calls "the psycho," is working on her father's last request--a carved bench for his beloved garden. But as Savannah's dad fades away, his garden thrives, projecting love to those who need it most. Yorke's haunting story is filled with supernatural elements that illuminate the many forms of love that exist in this world, and perhaps in the next. Patty Engelmann
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Bantam (August 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553580361
• ISBN-13: 978-0553580365
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,007,141 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Captivating tale of love, life and hope...., September 3, 2001

By	Marion "[e-mail]" (Louisiana) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

I stumbled upon Ms. Yorke's first book, "Magic Spells", in the library and picked it up merely because a blurb on the cover compared her writing to Alice Hoffman's. Well, Ms. Yorke has got Hoffman beat by a country mile! Her writing is fresh, passionate, sensitive and poignant. I enjoyed every page of this story, which is ultimately about mothers and daughters, and read it again when I got to the end, that's how good the story was. I'm looking forward to her next book with great anticipation.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful story about loyalty and love., August 1, 2000

By A Customer

This was an incredibly beautiful book, with sentences and sometimes whole passages that took my breath away. Christy Yorke has told a story about the loyalty we all feel toward our family, even when we don't want to. I loved the weaving of the tarot cards throughout the book, and the hint of the supernatural in the readings. A great book if you like beautiful writing and an emotional plot.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I'm having to leave out a lot!, March 14, 2003

By	Detra Fitch (USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Savannah Dawson worked in an advertising agency and had a rebellious fifteen, going-on-thirty, year old daughter named Emma. Savannah also told fortunes. It was a gift she had always possessed. So was her optimistic outlook on life. If an awful card turned up on a customer, like the card that predicts a loss, then Savannah would smile and tell the customer that she would probably only the ten extra pounds she had been exercising to get rid of in the first place. But when the cards showed Savannah bad news, she just knew it really was bad news. Her father was dying. So off she went to Arizona to be with him and a mother who hated her!

Emma saw the auras of people, but did not believe in magic and such like her mother did. She thought her mother was a dreamer and needed to wake up to reality. Emma could see her grandfather's dark aura, knew he did not have long, and therefore did not want to get to know him. She did not want to care for someone who was about to die, no matter how lovable he was. He was too much like Savannah.

Doug Dawson knew he was dying. He was in a hurry to finish his perfect garden before it happened though. He hired Jake Grey to build the perfect bench for it. Jake was thought of (by many) as a crazy man with even crazier dogs. Even Jake believed it! But one thing drove him even crazier, the thought of Savannah.

*** There is SO much that I am not telling. I got lost, not only in the lives of Savannah and Jake, but also in the lives of Emma and Eli, and Doug and Maggie. Then all of them must interchange to help each other pull through and learn hard lessons.

Author, Christy Yorke, had me shaking my head at Savannah's outlook on life, then at Emma's acting out for attention. I then found myself hopeful for Savannah, pulling for Jake, and weeping at the most tender of scenes. I cannot tell you what a marvel I believe this author to be! Highly recommended reading!