The Various Stages of a Garden Well-Kept : Blackwater Press : 9781735774732 : 1735774731 : 15 Jul 2022 : A quirky and heart-warming debut about family, life, and long-buried secrets. Loosely based on true events, this is a multi-generational tale about relationships and family. Short, punchy chapters provide a fragmented framework to the stories, which gradually begin to come together into a whole. In 1920 Irini Gaspari, a young Greek woman, leaves behind all that she holds dear ñ her family, and particularly her friend Martha ñ and emigrates to America, bound for an arranged marriage to a man she has never met. After tragedy strikes and her closely-knit family gradually seems to crumble to pieces, little Marieta finds her own path into womanhood in the changing world of the 1950s and 1960s. She faces struggles and joys, and tends to her garden where each plant and tree bears a memory of someone, while a dianthus holds a bitter secret. Jumping forward to 2010, in Akron, Ohio two brot