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The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

Audiobook
0 of 3 copies available
Wait time: About 2 weeks
0 of 3 copies available
Wait time: About 2 weeks

An enchanting and captivating novel about how our untold stories haunt us — and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive.

After her family suffers a tragedy, nine-year-old Alice Hart is forced to leave her idyllic seaside home. She is taken in by her grandmother, June, a flower farmer who raises Alice on the language of Australian native flowers, a way to say the things that are too hard to speak.

Under the watchful eye of June and the women who run the farm, Alice settles, but grows up increasingly frustrated by how little she knows of her family's story. In her early twenties, Alice's life is thrown into upheaval again when she suffers devastating betrayal and loss. Desperate to outrun grief, Alice flees to the dramatically beautiful central Australian desert. In this otherworldly landscape Alice thinks she has found solace, until she meets a charismatic and ultimately dangerous man.

Spanning two decades, set between sugar cane fields by the sea, a native Australian flower farm, and a celestial crater in the central desert, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart follows Alice's unforgettable journey, as she learns that the most powerful story she will ever possess is her own.

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    • School Library Journal

      May 1, 2019

      Homeschooled, sheltered, and sequestered, nine-year-old Alice Hart wanders away from home, down the long lane to town, and encounters the public library. Doors are opened as she discovers a world larger than her own. She also begins to more clearly see the bruises on her mother's arms and legs, realizing that she has been on the receiving end of her father's wrath. Alice, too, has been on the wrong side of his temper, but life in her Australian home can be wonderful when her mother translates the language of flowers. After a fire destroys all Alice has known, she is sent to live with her grandmother June, who runs a flower farm that is also a home for abused women. Under their guidance and care, Alice grows into a young woman. But a silence haunts Alice as she struggles to find her identity, causing a break with her grandmother. A new life far away among caring friends helps her to begin healing, but her newfound understanding is threatened when the love of an "undeserving man" endangers all that she has gained. This lyrical coming-of-age story intertwines the history and language of flowers with the lives of women. Readers will root for Alice as she attempts to discover and then understand the stories that explain her father and break out of her family's cycle of abuse. VERDICT Give to teens ready to think deeply about abuse, relationships, friends, lovers, and families.-Connie Williams, Petaluma Public Library, CA

      Copyright 2019 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Books+Publishing

      February 22, 2018
      The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart is a lush, powerful contemporary novel from debut author Holly Ringland. It revolves around Alice, who we first meet as an isolated young girl living by the sea with a violent father and an unwell mother. When tragedy strikes, a teenage Alice is sent to live on a flower farm run by a group of women, including her estranged grandmother. There, she grapples with her family’s secrets and learns more about the women who have suffered and endured throughout the farm’s history. As Alice enters adulthood, a past betrayal forces her to flee to the central Australian desert, a dazzling landscape, where she meets a man who is as dangerous as he is charming. This is an engrossing novel imbued with passion and reverence for the Australian natural world, with a cast of characters that inspire affection in the reader even as they make mistakes. Ringland’s decision to preface each chapter with a flower and its emotional significance is deftly handled, creating a thematic through-line that underscores and enhances the story. Those who couldn’t put down The Natural Way of Things will find a gentler but no less compelling journey of female survival in this novel. Claire West is a book buyer for independent and chain bookstores

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