From Viola Shipman, Author of The Charm Bracelet, The Hope Chest, The Recipe Box, The Summer Cottage, and now The Heirloom Garden

WINTER 2020 ISSUE

Happy 2020!

Dear Reader:

It’s a magical year: 2020! My grandma used to tell me that if I looked at a clock and its number was repeated – 1:11 p.m., 5:55 a.m., 12:12 – it meant I was exactly where I was supposed to be at that very moment. That always made me happy, and made me feel so safe.

I feel the same way about this year. I’ve long believed in signs – God winks, my mom used to call them, before that phrase became en vogue – we just have to be present and aware to notice them. Too many of us aren’t, unfortunately. We are too often lost in our heads, trying our darnedest just to keep up with all that’s going on. But that’s like trying to walk on quicksand. Sometimes, we need to stop, assess, lift our heads – and our hearts.

2020 is a big year for me:  It marks the 15th anniversary since I sold my first book. I didn’t think it was possible to write a book, much less land a literary agent and have her sell it to a major publisher. I felt back then as if time had not only stopped for me, but that it had already passed. It seemed that where I was at the moment would always be where I would be. One night I woke up in the middle of the night unable to sleep, dreading the next day of work, unhappy in the way much of my life had unfolded. I looked at the clock: It was 3:33 a.m.

God wink.

I got up and started writing what would be my first book. And the rest became history.

The Heirloom Garden Publishes on April 28th!

The Heirloom Garden, which publishes on April 28th, is my 10th book and fifth novel. I am deeply proud of this book, which continues to explore family heirlooms (in this case, heirloom flowers), as well as the importance of our histories, our legacies and our elders. 

The Heirloom Garden explores the relationship between two women a generation apart. They are equally scarred by the pain of war  --- World War II and the Iraq War. Together they find hope, purpose and friendship through a garden of flowers. It’s inspired by the heirloom flowers from my grandmas and those of other family members. The heirloom flowers that started in their gardens decades ago were transplanted to my mother’s gardens and, finally, to mine. If you love to garden, or just love flowers – peonies, hydrangeas, lilacs, bleeding hearts, hollyhocks – then this is the novel for you! Some of these plants have followed me around the country and now bloom in my acres of Michigan gardens. 

As an author, I always start my novels not with an heirloom in mind, or certain character, but a question. In this novel, my questions were, “What makes us isolate ourselves from the world? And what gives us hope?” In the novel, two women scarred by war are united by loss and a love of flowers. 

In addition, The Heirloom Garden explores the history of Victory Gardens and their importance in America and World War II. Thousands of gardens were started in cities, large and small, all across America – women leading the charge – and they helped feed their own families and communities as well as our troops and allies.  Today’s resurgence of urban and community gardens is a legacy of those Victory Gardens. 

2020 marks the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II (on August 15, 1945, Japan surrendered, with documents signed on the deck of the American battleship USS Missouri on September 2, officially ending the war).

I consider The Heirloom Garden to be my richest, deepest and most moving work to date. I can't wait to see what you think of it.

My grandmother, Viola, and flowers

World War II victory garden posters

Personal Inspiration for  The Heirloom Garden

The summer when I was 13, my 17-year-old brother Todd died just before the 4th of July.  He still was a child in so many ways, and his loss had a profound impact on me and my family. As you can imagine, my family was devastated. After Todd died, my mom stayed in bed for weeks, unable to eat or sleep. She cried for what seemed like eternity. We all did. I slept beside her, and we held onto one another, scared to let go. Slowly, my grandma coaxed my mom and me out of bed, then onto the porch, and finally into the garden.

My grandma was a grand gardener: Her yard was filled with flower gardens and vegetable beds. My grandma’s “yard” was actually a couple of acres wide, and she grew all the Southern staples, from juicy tomatoes to luscious lilacs. My favorite flower that she grew was the peony. She grew rows of peonies – gorgeous, giant white puffs, tinged with pink – whose blooms would get so big that their stems would just give way, the flowers flopping on the ground like a dog on a hot summer day. Over time, she grew a row under her laundry line. When I would stay with her, I’d sleep in sheets that smelled like heaven. 

My mom and grandma worked side by side the rest of that muggy, Ozarks summer. I was right there beside them, dragging cuttings into the woods, un-kinking the hose, or taking cut flowers inside to place in McCoy vases. Gardening helped heal us. We cried as we weeded. We prayed as we knelt. We grounded ourselves in the earth that surrounded us. We found comfort and purpose working in the garden that summer.

My father was never much of a gardener, nor was he a man of emotion. But he began to grow roses after Todd died, a strange hobby for my father, who was an engineer. Over time, we began to understand: He nurtured those roses as if they were his child. He fussed when they were fickle, he busted with pride when they bloomed. He grew a rainbow of roses: pink, yellow, peach, red, white. They were stunning.

For years it was too painful for us to return to the cemetery where my brother was buried. Thus until I was older, we never knew that my father also had planted a rose bush at my brother’s grave. 

How we healed, how we came together, how we found faith again is a huge part of this novel.

Oh, and to this day, my favorite flower is the peony. 

An Excerpt from The Heirloom Garden

Each chapter of The Heirloom Garden centers on a flower that my family grew. Much of the story’s “heart” surrounds the memories I have gardening with my mom and grandma. The following excerpt is from the Prologue called "The Rose." It introduces Iris, one of the main characters, a botanist who has given up her livelihood after her husband is sent off to war. She now toils in her town’s Victory Garden to help feed her community, soldiers and allies – worried every second about her husband. She wears a rose that reminds her of him, and the color of his cheeks.

Prologue

My garden was now filled with my family’s legacy. Nearly every perennial I possessed originally began in my mom and grandma’s gardens. My grandma taught me to garden on her little piece of heaven in Highland Park overlooking Lake Michigan. And much of my childhood was spent with my mom and grandma in their cottage gardens, the day lilies and bee balm towering over my head. When it got too hot, I would lay on the cool ground in the middle of my grandma’s woodland hydrangeas, my back pressed against her old black mutt, Midnight, and we’d listen to the bees and hummingbirds buzzing overhead. My grandma would grab my leg when I was fast asleep and pretend that I was a weed she was plucking. “That’s why you have to weed,” she’d say with a laugh, tugging on my ankle as I giggled. “They’ll pop up anywhere.”

My mom and I would walk her gardens, and she’d always say the same thing as she watered and weeded, deadheaded and cut flowers for arrangements. “The world is filled with too much ugliness – death, war, poverty, people just being plain mean to one another – but these flowers remind us there’s beauty all around us, if we just slow down to nurture and appreciate it.”

Grandma Myrtle would take her pruners and point around her gardens. “Just look around, Iris. The daisies remind you to be happy. The hydrangeas remind you to be colorful. The lilacs remind us to breathe deeply. The pansies reflect our own images back at us. The hollyhocks tell us to stand tall in this world. And the roses – oh, the roses! – they prove that beauty is always present even amongst the thorns.”

The perfumed scent of the rose lingers in front of my nose, and I pluck it free and raise it to my eyes.

My beautiful Jonathan Rose.

I’d been unable to sleep the last few years or so, and – to keep my mind occupied – I’d been hybridizing roses and daylilies, cross-pollinating different varieties, experimenting to get new colors or lusher foliage. I had read about a peace rose that was to be introduced in America – a rose to celebrate the Nazis leaving France, which was just occurring – and I sought to recreate my own version to celebrate my husband’s return home. It was a beautiful mix of white, pink, yellow and red roses, which had resulted in a perfect peach.

I remember John again, as a young man, before war, and I again focus my mind on my garden, willing myself not to cry.  

My garden is marked by stakes of my experiments, flags denoting what flowers I have mixed with others. My dining room looks like the hosiery aisle at Woolworths. Since the war, no one throws anything away, so I use my old nylons to capture my flower’s seeds. I tie them around my daylily stalks and after they bloom, I break off the stem, capture and count the seeds, which I plant in my little greenhouse. I track how many grow. If I’m pleased with a result, I continue. If I’m not, I give them away to my neighbors.

I fill my Big Chief tablets like a banker fills his ledger:

1943-Yellow Crosses

Little Bo Beep = June Bug x Beautiful Morning

(12 seeds/five planted)

Purple Plum = Magnifique x Moon over Zanadu

(8 seeds/four planted)

I shut my eyes and can see my daylilies and roses in bloom. I was once asked how I had the patience to wait three years to see how many of my lilies actually bloomed. I said, “Hope.”

And it’s true: We have no idea how things are going to turn out. All we can do is hope that something beautiful will spring to life at any time.

Special Reader Giveaway:  
Win a Dozen Roses for Valentine's Day

To celebrate the upcoming release of The Heirloom Garden, and to honor the memory of my dad, I am pleased to offer the following giveaway.

If you pre-order a copy of The Heirloom Garden from any bookseller in any format (paperback, hardcover, e-book or audio) and email a copy of the receipt to gary@violashipman.com, you will be eligible to win A DOZEN RED ROSES FROM ME ON VALENTINE’S DAY! The deadline for entries is Monday, February 10th.

This giveaway is ONLY for subscribers of The Heirloom Newsletter.

Note: For an author, pre-orders of a book are the equivalent of first weekend ticket sales for a movie’s release, the first week’s box office for a Broadway play, or opening day attendance for a professional baseball or football team. In short, pre-sales of a book demonstrate surefire support of a book and enthusiasm

And pssst..... I will be doing a GRAND GARDEN GIVEAWAY in the April issue, so stay tuned. GOOD LUCK, and think spring!

Pre-Order The Heirloom Garden
at the Following Retailers
Or At Your Local Bookseller

Tour Schedule for The Heirloom Garden

I’m going to be on tour a lot this spring and summer. I would LOVE to see you at one of the following events. Please check my appearances page on my web site for the latest updates as more appearances are always being added.

Tuesday, April 28, 2020
7:00 pm
Loutit District Library and Spring Lake District Library
Special Event at the Tri-Cities Museum
Complimentary wine, drinks and appetizers
Books available for purchase, sold by The Bookman
200 Washington Avenue
Grand Haven, MI 49417
(616) 850-6900

Wednesday, April 29, 2020
1:00 pm
Heirloom Garden Party
(coffee, cookies and camaraderie)
East Grand Rapids Library
746 Lakeside Dr., SE
East Grand Rapids, MI 49506

Wednesday, April 29, 2020
7:00 pm
Forever Books
312 State Street
St. Joseph, MI 49085
Books available for purchase
(269) 982-1110

Thursday, April 30, 2020
6:30 pm
Saturn Booksellers
127 W Main Street
Suite A
Gaylord, MI 49735
Books available for purchase
(989) 732-8899

Tuesday, May 5, 2020
7:00 pm – Reception
7:30 pm – Talk
Lynden Sculpture Garden
2145 W Brown Deer Rd.
River Hills, WI 53217
Books available for purchase, sold by Boswell Books

Thursday, May 7, 2020
Charleston, SC
Luncheon hosted by Blue Bicycle books – time/venue to come!

Friday, May 8, 2020
Pawleys Island, SC
Litchfield Moveable Feast
11:00am: Luncheon and author talk
2:00pm: In-store signing
1 Norris Dr
Pawleys Island, SC 29585
Luncheon hosted by Litchfield Books

Lots More News to Come

Books, Books & More Books!

Though I’m not allowed to make  a formal announcement filled with details, I can share this (and picture me screaming it with arms raised): I will be writing many – and I mean a LOT – of wonderful novels for you in the years to come!

This will include (at least) TWO new books – a spring/summer novel and a winter-themed novel – that will publish in 2021. I promise that the next issue of the newsletter will be filled with dates and plans.

I will share photos of my gardens and many of the flowers that began in my grandmas’ gardens. I also will have a grand garden giveaway, perfect for spring, Mother’s Day and the launch of The Heirloom Garden. Please let your favorite readers, friends and family know to subscribe to the newsletter for wonderful giveaways in the future.

I hope you, like me, feel as if you are exactly where you are supposed to be. If not, it is within your power to change. May 2020 be a magical year filled with flowers and God winks!