Victory Garden: A Novel

The world is fracturing, and Rose Scofield is determined to build something enduring from the shards.

It is 1917. As the Great War reshapes the map of Europe and technology—automobiles, moving pictures, airplanes—accelerates the pace of human life, Rose is engaged in a visceral battle closer to home. She is a woman who yearns for self-possession in an era that views her as property, and she has staked her life on a single, radical goal: the right to vote. But independence carries a steep psychological price.

Amidst the protests and the political firestorms of Washington, DC, Rose encounters Adam Bell, a vaudeville actor who offers a glimpse of a life filled with laughter and lightness. To Rose, love feels like a vulnerability—a distraction from the iron-willed woman she has fought to become. When her activism leads to the cold bars of a jail cell, Rose is forced to confront the fragmented memories of who she was versus the independent woman she is determined to be.

In the shadow of a global conflict, Victory Garden is a poignant meditation on the memory of our ancestors’ struggles and the enduring, difficult beauty of a life lived on one’s own terms.