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.
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.
| Published By | House of Anansi Press Inc — Aug 7, 2018 |
| Specifications | 400 pages | 5.5 in x 8.5 in |
| Keywords | Sigourney weaver; sue monk kidd; secret life of bees; weyward; emilia hart; the lost kitchen; erin French; remarkably bright creatures; nine perfect strangers; big little lies; white lotus; hello beautiful; ann napolitano; geraldine brooks; Elizabeth strout; lucy barton; erin benzakein; growing floret; the garden chronicles; trauma narrative; family drama; botany; mother daughter relationship; Alycia Debnam-Carey; bohemian; |
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Excerpt |
| Written By |
HOLLY RINGLAND is the author of the award-winning international bestseller The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, adapted into a seven-part TV series on Amazon Prime, starring Sigourney Weaver. After living between Australia and the UK for ten years, Holly has been based in the Yugambeh region of southeast Queensland since 2020, where she wrote The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding in her “office,” a vintage caravan named Frenchie. hollyringland.com |
| Written By |
|
HOLLY RINGLAND is the author of the award-winning international bestseller The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, adapted into a seven-part TV series on Amazon Prime, starring Sigourney Weaver. After living between Australia and the UK for ten years, Holly has been based in the Yugambeh region of southeast Queensland since 2020, where she wrote The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding in her “office,” a vintage caravan named Frenchie. hollyringland.com |
“This story about family, love, and reinvention is defiant in its sweetness and is stirring to its end.” —Foreword Reviews
What can I say about The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart that would live up to the beauty of the words in this book? … A gorgeous book inside and out.
” —A Couple Reads“An impressive coming-of-age debut.” —Baking Bookworm
“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.” —Books and Publishing
A dark, floral fairytale ... There is a reason Ringland’s novel, her first, and already a bestseller, has been bought by publishers around the world, and it’s not the native flowers ... The first half of The Lost Flowers is delicate and dark as a fairytale, with violent details that stick to you like burrs. But it is in the second half, with Alice out in the real world, where Ringland really gets into gear, and her talent is undeniable ... Ringland’s storytelling is driven by an undimmed sense of wonder at the darkness and light, the damage and love in people. It makes for a determined investigation of abuse and survival accomplished with profound sensitivity.
” —Domestic violence and the lies that surround it—rarely is the topic explored in such a beautifully written, hopeful, and enthralling tale.
” —Lush, powerful ... 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. 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.
” —There’s an aching heart beating through Holly Ringland’s narrative that although at times seems almost broken, is stitched back together with shards of optimism that offer constant hope. These are characters we love, care about, and want to nurture ... A vivid and brave tale of love, loss, and inner power.
” —At its heart, this book is about finding a way to care for yourself, in a world that sometimes likes to step on its flowers.
” —The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart is a book that glows — in the fire and heart of it; in the wonder and hope of it. Holly Ringland is a gifted, natural storyteller and her novel — about finding magic in the dark; about the power of freedom and the freedom of story — istruly a light-giving, tender thing. A vivid, compelling, utterly moving debut.
” —Brooke Davis, author of international bestseller Lost & Found, winner of 2015 ABIA Fiction Book of the YearNot everyone who visits the central Australian desert understands the landscape of it. Holly Ringland does and shares her heart instincts in this epic telling. Each page arrives to us like the first flight of the butterfly from its cocoon. The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart is a literary gift.
” —Ali Cobby Eckermann, Yankunytjatjara poet, 2017 Windham-Campbell winner.“This novel shines with courage, with heart, and with love. Infused with a tender ferocity, and the beauty and warmth of native flowers, it invokes great stories of loss, kindness and home.” —Ashley Hay, author of The Railwayman’s Wife, winner of the 2013 Colin Roderick Award