Garden of Lies

From the seeds of a mother's deceit, two daughters grow up in a garden of lies.

On a hot July night in 1943, Sylvie Rosenthal faces the greatest dilemma of her life. Marriage to a much older man who adores her and indulges her every whim has lifted Sylvie from poverty into a world of protected luxury. As she races to the hospital to have the child her husband longs for, she realizes she could lose everything. The baby, in all probability, is the child of her lover, Nikos, and beneath her husband's adoration lies a steely jealousy. He would never accept a black-haired, black-eyed child as his own.

The extraordinary and violent sequence of events that follows shows Sylvie the way out of fear and the way into a lifetime of lies - lies that affect not only her but those that come after her. Rose, reared in hatred, but seeking tenderness, sublimates both emotions in her determination to be a brilliant lawyer. Rachel, scarred by a disastrous love affair and dedicating her life to medicine, volunteers for Vietnam where she fights to save a soldier's life and falls in love with the one man she should never have met - Rose's childhood sweetheart. And so, the tangle of deception, of passion, of tumultuous drama continues right up to an emotionally charged court trial and the dark secret at the very heart of Garden of Lies.

Copyright (c) 1996 Eileen Goudge.