Hedge by Jane Delury (The Balcony) is a roller coaster of a novel about family, creation, love, and shifting priorities, lush with detail and delicately rendered.
Maud is a garden historian, "with her odd mix of botany, archaeology, history, and practical gardening skills," and she loves her work. Originally from California, she was well suited to England, but reluctantly returned to the United States for her husband Peter's career. When Hedge opens, Maud is at work on a restoration project in New York's Hudson Valley. It is beautiful, stimulating work, and she is likewise stimulated by the company of Gabriel, a handsome, intriguing archeologist at work on the same site. Her two daughters, Ella and Louise, are about to join her for the rest of the summer. Peter remains in California: the couple has separated "both geographically and maritally," and Maud plans to make this separation permanent and legal, but their girls don't know this yet. On the cusp of an affair with Gabriel, she feels enlivened, awakened by his attention, her own physicality, the thrill of discovering flower beds from the Civil War era and the turning of the earth. She allows herself to dream of what a new life could look like for her as well as for the scotch roses, lilac, clematis, and honeysuckle she plants. But when the girls arrive from California, 13-year-old Ella suffers a trauma that snowballs into life-changing events for all involved.
Both a quiet domestic tale and a novel of surprising suspense, Hedge cycles from hopeful to harrowing and back again. Maud is nurturing and steely, riveting and unforgettable. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia