ABOUT
THE BOOK

Forty years after World War II, Ellen relates the events of that period, beginning with the death of her favourite cousin, Randall, with whom she had shared Easter Sundays, secrets and, perhaps, love. In an isolated, aging Maryland farmhouse, Randall had grown up among ghosts: his father, Sterling, present only in body, his mother, dead at a young age and the apparitions of a slave family. When Ellen receives a package after Randall’s death, containing his diary and a book called The Gardens of Kyoto, her bond to him is cemented, and the mysteries of his short life star to unravel.
The narrative moves back and forth between Randall’s death in 1945 and the autumn six years later, when Ellen meets Lieutenant Henry Rock at a college football game on the eve of his departure for Korea. But it soon becomes apparent that Ellen’s memory may be distorting reality, altered as it is by a mix of imagination and disappointment, and the truth about Randall and Henry – and others – may be hidden.