The Various Stages of a Garden Well-Kept

Loosely based on true events, this is a multi-generational tale about relationships and family. Short, punchy chapters provide a fragmented framework to the stories, which gradually begin to come together into a whole. In 1920 Irini Gaspari, a young Greek woman, leaves behind all that she holds dear – her family, and particularly her friend Martha – and emigrates to America, bound for an arranged marriage to a man she has never met. After tragedy strikes and her closely-knit family gradually seems to crumble to pieces, little Marieta finds her own path into womanhood in the changing world of the 1950s and 1960s. She faces struggles and joys, and tends to her garden where each plant and tree bears a memory of someone, while a dianthus holds a bitter secret. Jumping forward to 2010, in Akron, Ohio two brothers, Herman and Richard, in spite of their very different personalities, seem to have in common an awkward relationship with love. In their own, de-romanticised ways, they are looking for ‘ the one.’ They navigate romance, and take care of an ageing mother riddled with dementia and an obsession for… her garden. The lives of these characters are interwoven through Frieda Kahlo: an introspective and enigmatic calico cat who drifts between reality and the spiritual world, connecting the generations of characters. A mysterious character reveals his true identity at the end of the novel, and sets the scene for a happy ending.

Robert R. Davis grew up in a small town in northeast Ohio where he spent his childhood climbing trees and getting lost in his imagination. He went on to earn his BFA in drawing and MAT in Early Childhood Education. As a curious and restless young man, Robert followed the wind and moved throughout the country to work a variety of jobs, including environmental educator, art teacher, clown, starving artist, storyteller, backpack/canoe guide, and countless temporary jobs to satisfy his lust for life. After spending three years in the Caribbean, he eventually settled in western North Carolina with his wife, and Frieda the cat. Robert is now working with dementia patients, slipping off to coffee houses to pound away at his computer keyboard, baking banana bread to send to his daughter in college, and continuing to create artwork. Robert began writing as a result of encouragement from various college professors' off-hand remarks concerning his out-of-the-box approach to essays, which mirrored his approach to life. The Various Stages of a Garden Well-Kept was inspired by the tragic life of his Greek immigrant grandmother.