GHOSTS IN THE GARDEN: Reflections on Endings, Beginnings, and the Unearthing of Self
Beth Kephart
P.R. Contact Monique Muhlenkamp

National Book Award nominee Beth Kephart’s new book is an enchanting and evocative collection of meditations and reflections exploring the author’s mid-life discoveries about aging, identity, purpose, memory, and change against a backdrop of Chanticleer Gardens in Pennsylvania. Ghosts in the Garden weaves together fact and memory, images and prose to tell the story of one woman’s coming to terms with life’s mid-point and the changes and realizations that brings.

Finding herself at a turning point, she wonders what the second half of life will hold and also explores how she handled the first half. Without sentimentality or false argument, Ghosts in the Garden ultimately stands as a celebration of middle age.

Since her first visit to the renowned pleasure garden on her forty-first birthday, award-winning author Beth Kephart returned again and again, mostly alone, sometimes with her son. While charting the seasons and learning the names of things, she went on to come to terms with both endings and beginnings. Gardening has always been closely tied to growth and change, but rarely has it been written about so beautifully by a woman so unfamiliar with its techniques and pleasures.

Spanning a two-year cycle, each chapter is accompanied by a gorgeous black-and-white photograph of Chanticleer by William Sulit. Ghosts in the Garden pulses with possibility and purpose, with wisdom that is ageless and transcendent.

Beth Kephart is the author of A Slant of Sun: One Child’s Courage, Into the Tangle of Friendship, Still Love in Strange Places and Seeing Past Z: Nurturing the Imagination in a Fast-Forward World. She is the winner of numerous honors including 2000 National Endowment for the Arts Recipient, 1998 National Book Award Finalist, 1998 Salon Best Books of the Year, 1998 Leeway Grant Creative Nonfiction Award, 1997 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Top Grant for Fiction, and 1996 Bread Loaf Merit Scholarship for fiction. In addition, she has written for various magazines and newspapers, including Real Simple, New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Salon.com, Parenting, and Redbook. She lives outside of Philadelphia.

GHOSTS IN THE GARDEN by Beth Kephart
March 2005 • Personal Growth/ Memoir • Cloth • B&W Photos
Price: $17.00 • ISBN 1-57731-498-0 • 160 Pages