The Corner Garden

"I think I’ll call myself Gretel in this book. It’s not really my name. My name is really Jessie Barfoot, which is a perfectly respectable name, I guess, except that there’s nothing respectable about me. That’s one of the reasons we moved to Toronto. I’ve reached the age of fifteen and a half, and we’re going to get a New Start." Old secrets and new starts stand at the centre of The Corner Garden. Questions of what can be hidden—and what changed—are intertwined in a story that moves between occupied Amsterdam during the Second World War and modern mongrelized Toronto. Jessie Barfoot is precocious, witty and wounded, a female Holden Caulfield whose standards are too elevated for ordinary life. She’s been raised by single mother Michelle, a part-time student and sometime cab driver. When Michelle marries a charitable lawyer, Jessie feels only dismay. "I consider myself far too young to have learned the meaning of pro bono," she tells her diary, "much less feel its impact upon my so-called innocent life." After the new family moves to Toronto, Jessie’s curiosity is piqued by their cranky next door neighbour. Originally from the Netherlands, Martha van Telligen is a superb gardener with a secret she’s guarded ferociously since she was Jessie’s age. Yet once Jessie charms her way into the garden, Martha’s past begins a slow bleed into Jessie’s uncertain present, threatening both their futures.