Where the Sea Lavender Grows: A Novel

A woman restoring a historic cottage on the English coast uncovers a startling connection to the past in a haunting and bittersweet novel about art, loss, and love by the author of Closest Kept.

Elise, an artist grieving the loss of her son and a fracturing marriage, is in North Norfolk to restore Marsh House to its former glory, its walls adorned with the fading murals and paintings of its long-ago owner, Lilias Carter-Brown. Elise makes an immediate connection to the house, to Sam―a carpenter and a comfort―and to history itself when an old photograph draws Elise into Lilias’s heartbreaking past.

In 1939, with war threatening, Lilias and her sister turn Marsh House into a sanctuary for London evacuees―a young boy and his mother. But it’s the boy’s father, Harry, an enlistee soon to report for duty, with whom Lilias forms an unexpected and intimate bond. When Harry suddenly vanishes without a trace, it changes the course of Lilias’s life forever.

Now, as Elise and Sam work to solve the mystery of the disappearance, the restoration of Marsh House is bringing Elise back to life as well―to love again, to put her and Lilias’s pasts to rest, and to finally move on.

Kitty Johnson is the author of Closest Kept, Prickly Company, and Five Winters. She has an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia and teaches occasional creative writing classes. A nature lover and artist, Kitty enjoys walking in woodland and on the coast with her dog and makes collages and paintings from the landscape. She loves a challenge and once performed stand-up comedy as research for a book―an experience she found very scary but hugely empowering. Kitty lives in Norwich, Norfolk, in the UK with her partner and son. For more information, visit www.kittyjohnsonbooks.com.