The Memory Garden (Mary Rickert)

As a pretty old woman myself, I appreciated a novel in which one of the main characters is an even older woman, portrayed with unsentimental honesty but also love and respect. Nan has sore bones and faulty memories, but she is loyal and as good as she know hows to be. The other main character is her adolescent adopted daughter, a foundling left on her doorstep, born under a caul that gives her powers she doesn't know about. The main action takes place in a few days, as estranged friends from Nan's past come to visit, but this visit is just the stage on which old memories play out their flawed, contradictory, and ultimately redeeming story. As we wind backward and forward in time characters cross the boundary between life and death over and over, to the point where at the end it's not clear which side of this line each is on. This book reminds us that memories, as unreliable and fickle as they are, make us who we are. Highly recommended for its quiet, simple, but profound story telling and the lush descriptions of gardens, food, and experiences in general.