City Libraries, City of Gold Coast

Josephine's garden, Stephanie Parkyn

eng

no index present

fiction

Josephine's garden

Stephanie Parkyn

France, 1794. In the aftermath of the bloody end to the French Revolution, Rose de Beauharnais stumbles from prison on the day she was to be guillotined. Within a decade, she'll transform into the scandalous socialite who marries Napoleon Bonaparte, become Empress Josephine of France and build a garden of wonders with plants and animals she gathers from across the globe. But she must give Bonaparte an heir or she risks losing everything. The lives of two other women from very different social spheres are tied to the fate of the Empress Josephine. Marthes Desfriches has been widowed twice and is desperate to have a child when she enters a loveless marriage with an adversary of the Empress who despises her botanical ambitions. Anne Serreaux longs for a large family when she marries the man who becomes chief gardener for the Empress tasked with germinating the first Tasmanian blue gums in Europe. Each of these women faces obstacles in their relationships and in their quest to become mothers - experiencing trauma that will put all their lives at risk. Josephine's Garden is about identity, obsession, love and marriage, and, ultimately, finding the courage to let go