The White Garden: A Novel of Virginia Woolf by Stephanie Barron

Here’s one of my favorites from the KBCO archives. On a grey day in March of 1941, acclaimed British writer Virginia Woolf filled her pockets with heavy stones and walked into the fast flowing River Ouse. Her body was found three weeks later miles downstream. It was the tragic end of a brilliant novelist and essayist—one of the most influential 20th-century modernist authors. Or was it? 

Six decades after Woolf’s death, landscape designer Jo Bellamy comes to Sissinghurst Castle (one of England’s most famous castle-estates) to study the famed White Garden created by Woolf’s lover, poet and writer Vita Sackville-West.

In the castle’s shadow, Jo makes a truly shocking find: Woolf’s last diary and its first entry is dated the day after she allegedly killed herself.

When it is authenticated, the diary will shatter everything that historians now believe about Woolf’s suicide (and ruin many academic careers). But…the diary is suddenly stolen, adding to the riddle. 

Jo’s quest to find the truth puts her in peril as she examines the connection between Woolf and the seduction of her lover's White Garden—now one of the most iconic gardens in the world. 

Of course…let’s establish this: Barron sees mysteries literally everywhere. She also writes a popular series of Jane Austen mysteries and, under her real name (Francine Matthews) a very popular mystery series set in modern-day Nantucket.

https://francinematthews.com