Because the main character in my novels is a gardener, the theme of “the garden of Eden” is a natural fit. I use it in all my titles, subtly in The Serpentine Path and Uprooted, and more overtly in Exiled from Eden and Back to the Garden.
The title Back to the Garden is taken directly from Joni Mitchell’s haunting song “Woodstock.”
“We are stardust, we are golden, we are caught in the devil’s bargain, and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.”
This is a universal human theme. Sometime in the past, of our individual lives or the history of the human race, there was a time when everything was as it should be, and our job today is to get ourselves back to that ideal time.
People tell stories about their lives, stories that eventually evolve into myth. In my novel Back to the Garden, Susan tells anyone who will listen about her past as a gentlewoman on her father’s estate before she married for love and fell from grace.
We have faulty memories: usually the past was not as rosy as we remember it. So, can we rely on our hope and dream that the future will be a better place? Certainly, my characters, are embued with the belief that their lives will be better, and, as they embark on the ship to the “New World”, they are confident that they are headed Back to the Garden.
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