A mesmerizing, moving, and elegantly written debut novel, The Language of Flowers beautifully weaves past and present, creating a vivid portrait of an unforgettable woman whose gift for flowers helps her change the lives of others even as she struggles to overcome her own troubled past.
The Victorian language of flowers was used to convey romantic expressions: honeysuckle for devotion, asters for patience, and red roses for love. But for Victoria Jones, it’s been more useful in communicating grief, mistrust, and solitude. After a childhood spent in the foster-care system, she is unable to get close to anybody, and her only connection to the world is through flowers and their meanings.
Now eighteen and emancipated from the system, Victoria has nowhere to go and sleeps in a public park, where she plants a small garden of her own. Soon a local florist discovers her talents, and Victoria realizes she has a gift for helping others through the flowers she chooses for them. But a mysterious vendor at the flower market has her questioning what’s been missing in her life, and when she’s forced to confront a painful secret from her past, she must decide whether it’s worth risking everything for a second chance at happiness.
The Victorian language of flowers was used to convey romantic expressions: honeysuckle for devotion, asters for patience, and red roses for love. But for Victoria Jones, it’s been more useful in communicating grief, mistrust, and solitude. After a childhood spent in the foster-care system, she is unable to get close to anybody, and her only connection to the world is through flowers and their meanings.
Now eighteen and emancipated from the system, Victoria has nowhere to go and sleeps in a public park, where she plants a small garden of her own. Soon a local florist discovers her talents, and Victoria realizes she has a gift for helping others through the flowers she chooses for them. But a mysterious vendor at the flower market has her questioning what’s been missing in her life, and when she’s forced to confront a painful secret from her past, she must decide whether it’s worth risking everything for a second chance at happiness.
Lisa C. says:
"'A rose is a rose is a rose,' wrote Gertrude Stein, and she was right - in so many ways, but she didn't further comment on the meaning of the different colors of roses. Yellow roses mean infidelity - or do they? In Vanessa Diffenbaugh's debut novel, The Language of Flowers, readers enter the world of Victoria, who has been in the California foster system since she was born. Like you might imagine, Victoria has trust issues, sort of hates the world, has a low self-esteem, and fights relationships of any kind. When she is emancipated from the group home - she lives on her own terms and finds a job working with the things she knows best - flowers. For although her caseworker and countless foster families think Victoria is unteachable and a waste of time, one foster mom, Elizabeth, knew better. She taught Victoria the language of flowers. Each flower has a meaning, and that's how Victoria communicates. Whether it's working for the floral shop or magically knowing what flowers people need to make their lives better, Victoria speaks through them. This might sound as if Victoria finds her place, cures the neighborhood of all its ills through flower bouquets and lives happily ever after, but that doesn't happen. Victoria has a lot to learn about the world and people. Hers continues to be a hard path to gain this knowledge and to learn to live and to love and be loved. Vanessa Diffenbaugh writes about what she knows. She is a foster mom and has experience in dealing with troubled kids coming out of the system to live with her family for a time. Her novel tells the story of one girl's life, and with as much that goes wrong for Victoria, inside, she keeps alive a glimmer of hope. The book also contains Victoria's Dictionary of Flowers which I enjoyed reading to see what meaning the flowers that speak to me carry, 'Cherry blossom - Impermanence; Bougainvillea - Passion; Marigold - Grief; Pink Carnation - I will never forget you.'
Jackie says:
"Victoria spent her whole childhood in the foster system, if you could call it a childhood. She is filled with guilt, mistrust and desires only solitude when she 'ages out' of the system. The one thing that she knows and loves is flowers, and the Victorian language that is based on them. She uses that knowledge to gain a job at a florist, who takes her under her wing and opens the world of possibilities that Victoria never had any access to before and still doesn't trust. Throughout the book we find this reluctant, damaged flower bloom into a woman with a family and a future. This is a wonderful, hopeful, intense read that really tugged at my heart. This is Diffenbaugh's debut novel, which makes it even more impressive. I urge all of you to read it, and I will definitely be eagerly waiting for more from this very talented writer (and foster mother, so she truly knows the foster system that she is describing in this book)."
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