Book Description

   As a novelist concerned with issues of gender, social class, and ethnicity, Jo Sinclair has won coveted literary prizes and a devoted following. Now in this extraordinary memoir, she relates a tale as fascinating, and as moving, as any work of fiction. At the center of Sinclair's story is her relationship with Helen Buchman, a middle-class wife and mother with a passion for literature and gardening. The two women couldn't have been more different: Buchman, despite suffering from diabetes, was self-assured, cultured, stable. Sinclair, on the other hand, was a product of the Jewish ghetto, carrying a host of emotional and spiritual scars. Nevertheless, when Buchman invited the young woman into her home in the 1940s, the two developed an intense relationship. Buchman became both best friend and mentor, encouraging Sinclair's writing and passing along a sense of the spiritual nature of gardening. The book deals not only with these early formative years but also with Sinclair's struggle to accept her friend's death in 1963, her triumph over alcoholism, and her ultimate transfiguration as an accomplished author.