The Night Gardener: A Search For Home

The Night Gardener is more than a memoir; it is a quest. Literature, music, the art of storytelling, fly fishing, gardening as an expression of our deepest selves, the nature of memory, and the desire to story our own lives are its subject. Ultimately, transcendence through storytelling is the secret strength at the heart of Sandor's life, work, and play. These twenty essays form a startlingly honest and passionate narrative that strikes a mesmerizing balance between the domains of the domestic and the creative. Sandor is bold and heretical, witty and learned. From fishing in an alligator-infested lake and hiking through grizzly territory to seeking a way to ease her young daughter's pain after separating from her husband, she explores wildness and solace in both the outdoors and the mind. Each essay is dramatic and beautifully formed - full of wit and the author's insatiably curious mind. She brings to these works the electricity and thrilling imagination that ignite her highly acclaimed fiction. And through these essays emerges a portrait of a mother, scholar, fly fisher, and gardener living each role with furious passion. She also is a writer of glorious talent, able to wield this last with the control and virtuosity of the true artist. (53/4 X 81/2, X 212 pages)

Editorial Reviews

Ranging from childhood reminiscences to her life after separating from her husband, Sandor, whose first collection of short stories (A Night of Music) won a Rona Jaffe Award for fiction, offers 20 finely observed and expressive personal essays. Of particular interest are the selections that deal with fly-fishing. While living in Florida with her husband and new baby, Sandor took up the hobby as an antidote to cabin fever. In "Attitude Creek," she describes the peacefulness that, for her, comes from solitude in the wilderness. After Sandor observed a dozen Hasidic Jews watching her fish in the Colorado River, she was compelled, because of her own Jewish ancestry, to research the relationship between Jews and fishing. "Waiting for a Miracle: A Jew Goes Fishing" is an informed and gently funny rumination on this connection. Since Sandor details how she and her husband moved with their young daughter to Oregon in a search for an ideal home that would satisfy their mutual love of nature, it comes as something of a shock when she recounts how, after three years, she moved out; she states only that she fell in love with someone else, and her husband asked her to leave. "Solomon's Blanket" is a poignant account of how the shared custody arrangement to which she and her husband agreed could not prevent their six-year-old daughter from grieving over their breach. Although some of the pieces are more engrossing than others, this is a thoughtful collection by a talented writer. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.