At 18, aging out of the welfare system, she becomes homeless.
She ends up, consequently, back in a group home. Her relationship with Elizabeth is eventually shattered by Victoria’s crazy plan to keep her soon-to-be adoptive mother all to herself. The twofold narrative cuts abruptly back and forth, creating a complex canvas that contains Victoria’s tumultuous life as a foster child and her adult life as a florist. She tells Victoria she’s never had contact with him as a result of a feud with her sister. She feeds Victoria’s fascination with flowers, and they go together to the flower market, where Elizabeth’s teenage nephew works. Nothing Victoria can do to alienate Elizabeth succeeds - including filling her shoes with prickly-pear spines. “Your very last chance.”Įlizabeth, the owner and operator of a vineyard, was raised on a flower farm. Unrepentant.” Now Victoria is being taken to live with Elizabeth, yet another foster mother.
Her social worker describes her as “Detached. Her 9-year-old heroine, Victoria Jones, has already passed through at least 32 foster families that couldn’t handle her. She is full of flower wisdom and has fostered many children, often damaged victims of an unresponsive bureaucracy. In this original and brilliant first novel, Diffenbaugh has united her fascination with the language of flowers - a long-forgotten and mysterious way of communication - with her firsthand knowledge of the travails of the foster-care system. I would like to hand Vanessa Diffenbaugh a bouquet of bouvardia ( enthusiasm), gladiolus ( you pierce my heart) and lisianthus ( appreciation).
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