Elizabeth Shreve has led a careful, calculated life as a psychiatrist, helping others face their fears while she hides from her own. After fifteen years of withering from neglect, her marriage finally crumbles. Into her life comes Jack Bolton, a landscape artist and former patient who has just suffered a severe manic episode. Though Dr. Shreve intends to cure Jack, she finds herself instead swept up in his magical, mythical world of star-crossed love and glorious gardens.
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As Elizabeth and Jack's relationship progresses beyond the bounds of doctor andpatient, the lines between genius and madness, creativity and pathology, also become blurred. We witness the chaos and suffering, but also the beauty and healing, that the bipolar mind can bring. Jack refuses medication, believing it will rob of him of his ability to bring out the beauty around him. He challenges Elizabeth to escape the straitjacket of her own fears, and helps Elizabeth's fourteen year old daughter embrace her own uniqueness. He creates lavish gardens, each one more elaborate than the next, all in one manic, glorious summer, until the chill of autumn, and his own depression, settles in. Elizabeth must then discover just how much Jack and her newfound freedom mean to her by putting her entire career on the line to save him.
The review of this Book prepared by Rob Cohen
