Blogging Woolf

The White Garden: A Novel of Virginia Woolf by Stephanie Barron, author of a mystery series based on Jane Austen, examines Woolf’s death from the vantage point of present-day England.

According to Publisher’s Weekly, the story begins when American Jo Bellamy sets out to study the White Garden at the Sissinghurst estate of Vita Sackville-West. Bellamy is working for Long Island clients who want to recreate it and also wants to figure out why her grandfather, who worked at the garden as a youth, killed himself.

The story line includes a journal that may be Woolf’s work and a wild tour of Woolf’s stomping grounds to track down answers to questions and missing journal pages.

“While leaning on convenient stereotypes—the headstrong but clueless American; the femme fatale (with eyes like “liquid pools”); stuffy Brits—Barron invests the text with a quick pace and an absorbing plot, making this a dynamic thriller with a well-tempered literary fixation,” Publisher’s Weekly relates.

The novel is expected to be out in bookstores in September.

Update: Read reviews of Barron’s novel in January magazine and the L.A. Times.