The apple garden story book full#

Booklist called Allen's accomplished debut 'spellbindingly charming.' The novel became a Barnes & Noble Recommends selection, and then a New York Times Bestseller.Īllen continues to serve heaping helpings of the fantastic and the familiar in fiction she describes as 'Southern-fried magic realism.' Clearly, it's a recipe readers are happy to eat up as fast as she can dish it out. Her big break occurred in 2007 with the publication of her first mainstream novel, Garden Spells, a modern-day fairy tale about an enchanted apple tree and the family of North Carolina women who tend it. It was like being able to major in eating chocolate.'Īfter graduation, Allen began writing seriously. In college, she majored in literature - because, as she puts it, 'I thought it was amazing that I could get a diploma just for reading fiction.

The apple garden story book full#

New York Times Bestselling novelist Sarah Addison Allen brings the full flavor of her southern upbringing to bear on her fiction - a captivating blend of magical realism, heartwarming romance, and small-town sensibility.īorn and raised in Asheville, North Carolina, in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Allen grew up with a love of books and an appreciation of good food (she credits her journalist father for the former and her mother, a fabulous cook, for the latter).

And soon the sisters realize they must deal with their common legacy-if they are ever to feel at home in Bascom-or with each other.Įnchanting and heartfelt, this captivating novel is sure to cast a spell with a style all its own…. Together again in the house they grew up in, Sydney takes stock of all she left behind, as Claire struggles to heal the wounds of the past. When Sydney suddenly returns home with a young daughter of her own, Claire’s quiet life is turned upside down-along with the protective boundary she has so carefully constructed around her heart. They are the last of the Waverleys-except for Claire’s rebellious sister, Sydney, who fled Bascom the moment she could, abandoning Claire, as their own mother had years before. Meanwhile, her elderly cousin, Evanelle, is known for distributing unexpected gifts whose uses become uncannily clear. But so were their futures.Ī successful caterer, Claire Waverley prepares dishes made with her mystical plants-from the nasturtiums that aid in keeping secrets and the pansies that make children thoughtful, to the snapdragons intended to discourage the attentions of her amorous neighbor. Generations of Waverleys tended this garden. Even their garden has a reputation, famous for its feisty apple tree that bears prophetic fruit, and its edible flowers, imbued with special powers.

The Waverleys have always been a curious family, endowed with peculiar gifts that make them outsiders even in their hometown of Bascom, North Carolina. In this luminous debut novel, Sarah Addison Allen tells the story of that enchanted tree, and the extraordinary people who tend it.… In a garden surrounded by a tall fence, tucked away behind a small, quiet house in an even smaller town, is an apple tree that is rumored to bear a very special sort of fruit.