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Tending
Roses
by Lisa Wingate
New American Library, 2001
ISBN: 0451203070
Fiction, 304 pp
Trade paperback: $12.95
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ABOUT THE BOOK
Taking care of her husband, baby, and aging grandmother on a
Missouri farm, a young woman discovers unexpected insights about
life, love, and herself, in the handwritten pages of her
grandmother's journal.
REVIEW
“Wingate's touching story of love and faith proves the old
adage that we should take time to smell the roses and try to put
our modern problems in perspective.” Booklist
Other Books by This Author
Texas Cooking
Good Hope Road
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LISA WINGATE
When not disguised as an author, I am
the mother of two young sons. I wanted girls. I got boys. I never
dreamed that boys could be so wonderful. But that is another
story.
I can not remember a time when I didn’t write. I started
writing books before I started school, and I never quit writing.
I had a very special first-grade teacher in Peasley School in
Northboro, Massachusetts, who recognized a little ability and a
lot of desire in a shy transfer student. She wrote on my report
card that she expected to see my name in the pages of a magazine
one day, and I suddenly felt incredibly special. She started
reading my stories to the class, and I was hooked. I quickly
discovered the joy of having an audience, and set out on many,
many writing projects.
Tending Roses is particularly special to me because it is
a combination of fiction and family memories told to me by my
grandmother. It is the kind of book I always wanted to write. So
many of today’s sound bites are sensational, and awful, and
when you take in all of those things, it is easy to lose faith in
the world and in the goodness of people. I want to create books
that are entertaining, but also good for the soul-- that
don’t leave readers feeling sad or disappointed, or wishing
they hadn’t read the book at all. I think we are all called
to add something good to the world, to inspire and uplift, to add
our colors to the canvas around us. I have met so many people who
have wonderful ways of doing that. I admire them. I want to be
like them. I love to write about them.
My grandmother was one of those people. She was an
individualist, a strong woman, and a mass of paradoxes with
fluffy gray hair. She could be a gossip and an instigator one
minute, and a good Samaritan the next, selfish with one hand and
generous with the other. I always knew she loved me, even when
she was threatening to withhold our $5 birthday checks if we did
not write to her more often.
Grandma passed away in her ninety-fifth year after being
afflicted for several years with Alzheimer's. Her memories slowly
left her, and her stories, other than those saved in old letters,
slipped away also.
I am thankful to have captured some of her stories in Tending
Roses...
Author's website
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