Gardens, Ghosts & Gentle Reckonings: A Delaney Novel

Ruth Delaney has built a career bringing neglected spaces back to life. Give her an overgrown garden, buried structure, and a project everyone else thinks is too far gone, and she'll find the shape of what still remains. The garden behind Cross House should have been straightforward-historic bones, community funding, and a clear restoration plan. Instead, Ruth finds a place layered with intention, grief, and the unmistakable sense that someone once loved it seriously. Worse, the property belongs to Vivian Cross, a reclusive novelist who has not published in years and who agreed to the restoration only in the narrowest possible sense. Vivian does not want help. She does not want questions. And she definitely does not want Ruth Delaney uncovering the parts of the garden-and the past-she has worked very hard to leave untouched. But gardens reveal themselves slowly, and so do people. As Ruth works to restore the hidden paths, quiet thresholds, and living patterns beneath the overgrowth, she begins to see the story someone planted into the space long ago. The more Vivian resists, the more Ruth recognizes what is really at stake: not just a restoration project, but the fragile, dangerous possibility of letting something beautiful keep changing after loss. Set in the coastal town of Delaney Harbor, Gardens, Ghosts & Gentle Reckonings is an emotionally layered sapphic romance about grief, restoration, second chances, and the quiet courage it takes to let love grow back differently than before.

Pagina's: 264, Paperback, Independently published