This middle grade, magical realism debut about a young girl who sets out
to discover the truth behind her mother's disappearance is The Secret
Garden meets the Book Scavenger series!
Floralie Laurel, freshly expelled from Mrs. Coffrey's School for Young
Girls, works as a flower seller in an English village with her guardian
brother, Tom, miles and miles away from their real home in France. Tom
and Floralie are drowning in debt, but fortunately, Grandmama arrives to
save them. Unfortunately, Grandmama's idea of "saving" means sending
Floralie to the Adelaide Laurel Orphanage for Unfortunate Children and
shaping her into a proper lady--i.e., ridding her of imagination,
daydreams, paintings, and poetry.
Before Grandmama can take her away, Floralie discovers a hidden box of
dried flowers and a letter from her mother, who had mysteriously
disappeared years ago. The letter promises that the flowers will lead
Floralie to Mama if Floralie decodes them with a floriography--a
dictionary of flower meanings written by Claude Monet's gardener.
Accompanied by an orphan boy who speaks only on paper, a blind
librarian, and a thieving dormouse, Floralie sets off for Monet's house
in France to find Mama. But Mama's fate may not be quite as Floralie
expected, and the gardener may be hiding secrets deeper than Monet's
water lily ponds....
A beautiful bouquet of lush language, magical landscapes, and colorful
characters. Moser has written a story designed to be sipped and savored
like nectar. (Laura Marx Fitzgerald, award-winning author of Under the
Egg and The Gallery)
