Lilacs

A celebration of an iconic bloom, Lilacs offers advice on how to care for and propagate these exquisite flowers.

This collection of essays leads into the eccentric imagination of Gerald Murnane, one of the masters of contemporary Australian writing, and winner of the Patrick White Literary Award.

One woman, an impossible dream, and the faith it took to see it through, inspired by the life of Hulda Klager German immigrant and farm wife Hulda Klager possesses only an eighth-grade education—and a burning desire to create something beautiful. What begins as a hobby to create an easy-peeling apple for her pies becomes Hulda’s driving purpose: a time-consuming interest in plant hybridization that puts her at odds with family and community, as she challenges the early twentieth-century expectations for a simple housewife. Through the years, seasonal floods continually threaten to erase her Woodland, Washington garden and a series of family tragedies cause even Hulda to question her focus. In a time of practicality, can one person’s simple gifts of beauty make a difference? Based on the life of Hulda Klager, Where Lilacs Still Bloom is a story of triumph over an impossible dream and the power of a generous heart. “Beauty matters… it does. God gave us flowers for a reason. Flowers remind us to put away fear, to stop our rushing and running and worrying about this and that, and for a moment, have a piece of paradise right here on earth.”

Newly married bride Laura Wainwright tries her best to settle into life at her husband's oppressive family manor despite his strange family, but when a series of "incidents" endanger her life she must discover what secrets the family is hiding.

Lilacs in the Snow chronicles Caasi's passage from desolate childhood to impetuous adolescence to a shaken, yet solid adulthood, and is intertwined with the similarly volatile political, socio-economic, and racial climate of the mid-twentieth century. The story begins when an adult Caasi returns to Montréal and visits her estranged father. The encounter rekindles fragments of her childhood chaos, and she takes the reader on a gripping journey through the world of her collected memories, which are illuminated by flashes of sensitivity, poignancy, budding sensuality, resilience, humor, and abidi.