Mistaken for a witch, Nan is actually an older lady who happens to have a shoe garden. People send her cast-off shoes and they become the perfect planters for hollyhock, pennyroyal and mallow.
Along with harsh words, people leave clothes, bread, honey. Eventually, someone leaves a baby in a shoe box. This sets all kind of figurative fireworks and changes the course of Nan's life.
The author's use of foreshadowing is superb:
"Nan tries to hold her breath against the scent of memory, but there they are, the three of them in whispered conference, standing in the snow, promising to die with the secret of Eve's last hours, bound by the very oath that would tear them asunder."
This is a story of three old women with a dark secret and the baby (now grown into a teenager) whom Nan has adopted.
Similar titles:
Shipman, Viola. The Heirloom Garden.
