A love story about grief, OCD, and dirt

Tilly Silverberg is rebuilding her life with her youthful son, Isaac, a single potted-up plant at the same time. Since her husband’s death, gardening is becoming her livelihood and her salvation. Concealing out in the North Carolina forest, she desires only to be left alone with Isaac and her greenhouse.

New to the region, successful software developer James Nealy requires a garden. On the solitary mission to reclaim his existence from irrational obsessions and relentless compulsions, about The Unfinished Backyard he has a strategy: to conquer his most significant fear. Dirt. One glimpse-or two-of Tilly’s backyard, and he knows she holds the main element. However when he asks her to take him on as a client, she refuses.

After a family group emergency pulls Tilly and Isaac back again to her native Britain, she’s quietly happy, because absolutely nothing has changed in her childhood village. Or has it? Her first love is unexpectedly one, her mother is scheming, and her best friend is definitely keeping secrets. After that James appears on her doorstep.

Tenuous at first, but gradually taking root, James and Tilly forge an unlikely bond. As they work together to recovery a garden choked by neglect, they unearth each other’s secrets, each other’s doubts, each other’s hopes-and probably, a distributed second chance.