Garden

de Paul Perry

'The garden is dying. Once an Edenic orchid farm, it has been decimated by the worst hurricane in Florida's living memory. Its glasshouses are shattered, the surrounding mangroves encroach and it laborer's are dangerously idle. When Romeo - an expert breeder of the endangered ghost orchid arrives from Honduras, Blanchard the keeper of the Garden, and Swallow his Irish lieutenant, believe their fortunes are on the rise. Romeo may not be all that he seems though, and Swallow can sense the newcomer shaking the Garden's creaking hierarchy. The ghost orchid they seek is infamously rare, a delicate and wildly valuable species, hidden deep in the treacherous cypress swamps of the Fakahatchee Strand. To capture the ghost, Blanchard and Swallow must strike a deal with a dangerously unpredictable member of the local Seminole tribe, whose wounded pride and simmering violence threaten to uproot any hope of success. As Blanchard's obsession distracts him from what is truly precious, Swallow's long buried traumas will test his ability to stope lust, betrayal and death from engulfing the Garden.' -cover.