The Gardener's Wife's Mistress

From award-winning poet and author of Ghost Girls and Rabbits and Idle Hands comes a new novel about nature, grief, and the space we hold for loved ones long after death, no matter what they might have done.

The deepest roots are the hardest to uncover.

Hayden Hill has always felt most comfortable with his hands in dirt, nurturing life. He designs natural spaces for others and comes home to his back yard, where he seeks refuge amidst the fruits and vegetables, flora, and shade-giving trees. When he finds himself suddenly a widower, his garden becomes the resting place for the ashes of his wife, Shelly, and he's thrown into an unexpected vortex of pain, shock, and guilt. As Hayden struggles to survive the torment of each day and keep his landscaping company functioning, a directive in Shelly's will leads him to the discovery of a shocking secret.

Fighting to find a path through the weeds of grief, Hayden meets his wife's secret connections and becomes involved helping local, homeless teens cast out by their families for choosing to be who they are. Rocked by this newly discovered, complicated facet of Shelly's life, he begins to question their marriage, her identity, his past choices, and whether anything he believed about his wife was ever true.

"Cassondra Windwalker's contemplative novel begins with the sudden, challenging loss of a spouse... With its deliberate reflections on grief and loss, the novel The Gardener's Wife's Mistress evaluates endings, beginnings, and the connectedness of humans to nature." ―Foreword Reviews

"A melodramatic tale of a widower's second chance at life. After middle-aged landscaper Hayden Hill loses his 46-year-old wife, Shelly, to a stroke, he finds out that she was the secret co-owner of a flower shop, and that she has willed her stake to him. The shop turns out to be a front for a shelter for at-risk transgender teens."—Publishers Weekly

"This was a beautiful, tragic, and complicated novel, which makes it relatable for me as a reader. A great lesson on how we still love those we lose even when things are uncovered after they are gone."—Ellen Ross, Goodreads reviewer

"A quiet explosion—a lyrical, character-driven novel about grief, truth, and the deep tangle of what it means to really know someone. It's one of those books that sneaks up on you. You think you're settling into a slow-burn meditation on loss and end up knee-deep in emotional excavation, sifting through the remains of a marriage that wasn't what it seemed."—Kimberly, Goodreads reviewer