The Winter Garden
Nicola Cornick’s latest timeslip novel looks at the Gunpowder Plot and its leader, Robert Catesby, a Catholic who planned to blow up Protestant King James on November 5, 1605, at the state opening of Parliament. As we know, the assassination attempt was foiled, but how and by whom?
Cornick explores two time periods, starting in 1592, with Anne Catesby worried about her wild son and deciding marriage to heiress Catherine Leigh might be the right thing to calm him. Set against this in the present day is violinist Lucy Brown, whose career has been ended by illness. She flees to her aunt’s home to try to recover. The ‘Gunpowder Cottage’ in Oxfordshire was originally home to Robert and Catherine, and an impressive winter garden was built in the grounds for Catherine by Robert. Lucy meets Finn, a garden historian leading an archaeological excavation of the site, and then she starts to have visions in the garden of a woman dressed in Tudor costume. The woman is trying to tell her something, but what?
How these time streams come together and the secrets they reveal are part of Cornick’s well-plotted novel. Robert remains elusive, but this stops the reader being bogged down with the intricacies of the Gunpowder Plot and lets Anne’s dilemma of having to decide between her son and her family take hold, while Lucy tries to figure out past truths and lies. There are some red herrings and lots of romance thrown in. Another great read from Cornick.
