So there Ruth was, walking and walking away from all her happiness. She was shaking with anger, her knees were bowing over with sorrow, but she was not turning. Not even once. She would not yield. She would not let Peter see with even one single fiber of her being how it was with her.
All the same, as soon as she had rounded the distant bend in the lane, and knew she no longer could be seen, even her fiery will could not keep the raw pain from welling up inside her.
In August, 1971 clever, aloof Peter Van derLeyden has come to Haley’s Narrows to do research for his thesis on a changing rural community. Against his better judgement, and in spite of their different backgrounds, he falls hard for Ruth, a strange, fiercely loving young horse trainer. He can’t help feeling that if they could just get past their differences, Ruth would keep him safe. Only, when he is confronted with her pregnancy, it all falls apart.
“How could you possibly think,” She was speaking as distinctly as he was now. “that I would ever, ever, ever, even for one small minute, think of getting rid of my—our–baby? I guess you don’t know me at all.”
He simply can't believe that she is walking away from him without a backward glance. Meanwhile, as she set out on her journey, Ruth believes that Peter has betrayed her. Knowing there is no place for her and a baby at home, and with little plan for her future, she heads for the city. Haunted by sorrow, she collapses en route, and here began a most unlikely relationship.
Taking her in is savage Martin Livesay, a solitary, nearly-forgotten artist. For him, Ruth’s coming to work for him represents one last chance. Frozen with despair after the death of his adored wife, Elisabet, and also by his failure to communicate his artistic vision, he offers the girl work tending the unforgettably lovely “Famous Flower Garden” and in so doing changes their lives, and also that of Peter, forever.
For Ruth, in her desolation, two remarkable settings form the background for her transformation. The first is the “Famous Flower Garden”, Martin’s gift to his dying wife: "You see, everywhere, the beauty of it all was fanning her, keeping her alive. And for a long time, I believed that I could keep her going, that it might just be possible if only we could keep the garden alive. Just to hold that light in her face."
And the second is Martin's home in an abandoned mill, with a lofty, high-ceilinged studio crowded with an artist’s fascinating paraphernalia, as if laid in against a seige.
While forming an ever-difficult, but moving friendship with the aged, once-famous artist, and as her baby grows within her, try as she does, she cannot forget Peter, the man she whole-heartedly and passionately loved. Although stung by her rejection, and no longer at home in what he now sees as a narrow academic world, Peter finds that after Ruth nothing else matters. Over the course of the winter and the coming spring, he too must grow before he can approach her and ask “Do you think I might come and see you again?”
