When her mother dies of cancer, Mari Lennox accepts a grant to go to Japan to document the Yanagi Inn. She’s reluctant to accept the grant so soon after her mother’s death, but at her sister’s urging, she goes ahead with her plans. As her father was an expatriate working in Japan, Mari spent her early years there. As an adult, she and her sister run an art gallery in the States. Though she’s still active in art, Mari has moved away from doing her own creative work with a camera.
Her arrival in Japan is inauspicious. Her ride from the airport arrives late, and she’s greeted by an overbearing woman, the manager of the inn. The following day, Mari begins her explorations of the inn. Her grant was very nonspecific, and she’s not quite sure what she’s being expected to accomplish. Despite being warned to stay on the approved paths, she extends her investigations into less accessible areas and discovers a secret garden on an island. She’s not sure if she’s experiencing jet lag or a delayed grief response, but she has visual and auditory hallucinations in which she sees her mother and hears a child crying. As Mari uncovers the layers of the garden, her images become striking, delicate yet laced with a bit of mystery. As she searches the hidden areas of the inn, she finds that her own history is tied to the inn.
This is an adult retelling of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The Secret Garden of Yanagi Inn retains much of that book’s sense of secrets, ghosts, and hidden mysteries. Mari is cracked, consumed by the loss of her mother and Thad, her ex-boyfriend, yet this is a story of redemption, forgiveness of self and others, and the power of grief to transform one’s life. Logan’s prose is as lyrical and as haunting as the inn itself. Many scenes and phrases that are haunting and luminous. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and devoured it in one sitting.
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The Secret Garden of Yanagi Inn (CamCat Books, October 25, 2022) is available through:
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