Peeling the Onion

I like books that evolve and reveal, and like peeling an onion, show what’s underneath or what’s behind. Two of my favorite books of this sort are People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks and Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton.

People of the Book follows Hannah Heath, an Australian rare-book expert, as she restores the Sarajevo Haggadah, a beautifully illuminated Hebrew manuscript created in fifteenth-century Spain. Hannah has her own life story drama, but for me the real drama came as she peels apart the book and finds the relics that reveal the book’s rich history: an insect wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, and a white hair. Inspired by the Haggadah’s true story, each relic’s origin is imagined with touching, engrossing stories that bring each character to life. In fact, at times, I found myself more interested in the people of the book’s past than in Hannah’s story. Yet, there is mystery and intrigue afoot around one of the oldest Sephardic Haggadah’s in the world, and Hannah unwittingly is entangled in the connivance. I have read this book twice and still love it.

Forgotten Garden, I realize, is similar in that a book leads to a historical past. Found abandoned on a pier in Brisbane, Australia, a young girl carries a suitcase that contains some clothes and a single book of fairy tales. On her twenty-first birthday, the harbor master who adopted her tells her the truth of her origins. Feeling lost and foundation-less, Nell, as she was named, has little but the book to lead her to her true past. After many years of pondering her past, Nell decides she will finally travel to England but she is suddenly left to care for Cassandra, her granddaughter, and her search is thwarted. After Nell’s death, Cassandra finds clues that set her off on the hunt. Her pursuit leads to all the layers of Nell’s story being unpeeled. This book intertwines stories more “densely” than People of the Book does, in that chapters jump between time frames more rapidly and diversely, but each chapter is dated and each story is easily followed. Nell and her granddaughter Cassandra are both strong women, each with a tale I loved following. The unveiling of Nell’s childhood home will likely sound familiar to fans of The Secret Garden with some traces of Downton Abbey thrown in, as well. I have only read this book once but know it too will be read again.

This blog post was written by Adult Services Librarian, Jeanette Walker.