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Edith Stoker’s father is building a wall in their backyard. A very, very high wall—a brick bulwark in his obsessive war against their hated neighbour Edward Black.

It is 1969, and far away, preparations are being made for man to walk upon the moon. Meanwhile, in the Stokers’ shabby home in the East Midlands, Edith remains a virtual prisoner, with occasional visits from her grotesque and demanding Aunt Vivian serving as the only break in the routine.

But when shy, sheltered Edith begins to quietly cultivate a garden in the shadow of her father’s wall, she sets in motion events that might gain her independence... and bring her face to face with the mysterious Edward Black.

Rosie Chard’s followup to her award-winning debut Seal Intestine Raincoat unfolds like a grown-up take on The Secret Garden, an engrossing, often mordantly funny portrait of a young woman who miraculously finds her own pathway to freedom within the most stifling of environs.

Praise to The Insistent Garden
"Blood feuds and family secrets boil under the respectable surface of 1960s small town England in Chard's second novel ... While the lead up is long, readers who persevere are rewarded with a satisfying and well-crafted dénouement."
~ Publishers Weekly
"Has all the simplicity and lingering menace of a Victorian fairy tale ... [i]t evolves quietly into a cross between rosy mystery and romance that carries its sheltered protagonist to the threshold of the bigger world."
~ Dave Williamson, Winnipeg Free Press
"If you take nothing away from The Insistent Garden other than the desire to plant a bed of blue flowers and a feeling of deep unease, you will know the conflicted heart of Edith Stoker, and Chard will have done her job."
~ Angela Hickman, National Post
"The novel is populated by baroque characters, vivid in their oddity, but they are not allowed to distract us from Edith, for this is the story of a lonely, marginalized individual in transition, the beginning of the rest of a life."
~ Margaret Thompson, The Coastal Spectator

>p>Rosie Chard grew up on the edge of the North Downs, a range of low hills south of London, UK. After studying Anthropology and Environmental Biology she went on to qualify as a landscape architect at the University of Greenwich and practiced for several years in England, Denmark and Canada. She and her family emigrated to Winnipeg in 2005 where she qualified as an English Language teacher at the University of Manitoba. She is now based in Brighton, England where she currently works as a freelance editor and language teacher. Her first novel, Seal Intestine Raincoat, was published in 2009 by NeWest Press; winning the 2010 Trade Fiction Book Award at the Alberta Book Publishing Awards, and receiving an honourable mention for the Sunburst Fiction Award. She was also shortlisted in 2010 for the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer. Her second novel, The Insistent Garden, won the 2014 Margaret Laurence Prize for Fiction at the Manitoba Book Awards.

More information about Rosie can be found on her website, www.rosiechard.com, or at her blog, www.rosiechard.org.

Rosie Chard's profile page

• Winner, Margaret Laurence Award For Fiction
• Short-listed, Best Book Cover / Jacket Design at the Alberta Book Design Awards