Frida's Garden

Nobody asked Frida Thistlewhite before deciding her back lot was going to become a garden. She said no. The town started digging anyway.

For thirty years, Frida has opened The Hollow Bean before sunrise, kept the coffee hot and the chalkboard sharp, and never once looked too closely at the weed-choked lot behind her café. She has a good life. She built it herself, on purpose, out of the pieces left over from a season she does not discuss.

Then Bell Hollow finds a plan for that lot drawn in Caroline Brennan's handwriting, and decides, without consulting anyone, that it is going to be built.

Frida says no for as long as saying no still works.

What comes up out of that ground isn't only thirty years of bindweed. It's a promise older than the weeds, and the man who left before he could keep it.

Frida's Garden is a cozy small-town romance about old love, new roots, and the courage to plant something anyway. Second in the Tales from Bell Hollow series, and readable on its own.