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by Norman Draper
Backyard peels back the placid, Miracle-Gro-soaked sod of gardening to reveal a culture of yucca fetishes, monarda mutilations, and herbivore-induced hissy fits. In the shocking world of Backyard, garden club backstabbers use dull gardening trowels, and the little old lady with loppers could be...an iris murderer!
As Backyard unfolds, the news leaks out that Burdick's PlantWorld is sponsoring a garden contest the likes of which the unassuming suburb of Livia has never seen. It quickly attracts the attention of Livia's middle-aged gardening reprobates. They include a cowled spy, a witch who channels the spirit power of millions of dead flower souls, and a saboteur who'll unleash a Mongol horde of half-starved rabbits on any garden if the price is right. Most threatening is resident gardening psychopath Dr. Phyllis Sproot. She'll stop at nothing to maintain her dominance as Livia's most eminent gardener.
Against these forbidding forces stands a determined couple - George and Nan Fremont. They vow in their quest for the first-place prize to turn their backyard into a suburban paradise of bursting summer blooms and trilling songbirds while blissfully sipping their favorite merlot and brandishing a butcher knife and genuine "Smokestack" Gaines baseball bat.
A sequel to Backyard is planned for October 2015.
"Draper's savory satire of such an unlikely source of obsession and greed demonstrates a splendid affinity for Mother Nature and a sardonic appraisal of human nature." - Booklist
"A light tale of suburban warfare waged by the gardening elite." - Kirkus
"Readers looking for a quick, witty read will enjoy the thorns in this prickly arrangement. " - Publishers Weekly
"Draper has bottled the spirits of competitive gardeners, added sugar and fizz and let them go, leaving the reader with many hilarious madcap adventures." - Suzy Bales, award-winning author of Suzy Bales' Down-to-Earth Gardener and Gardener Bouquets and Beyond
"Fast-paced, fun and full of flowers. You'll have a mental list of a dozen gardening friends you know will want to read this book before you're even done with the first chapter." - Amanda Thomsen, author of Kiss My Aster: A Graphic Guide to Creating a Fantastic Yard Totally Tailored to You, and popular gardening blogger and speaker.
This information about Backyard was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Norman Draper spent 35 years as a newspaper reporter in Minneapolis; Denver and Colorado Springs, Colorado; and Jackson, Mississippi before leaving journalism in 2011.
An avid gardener in thought, if not in deed, he is always up to the task of uncorking a bottle of Sagelands 2007 Merlot once Jennifer's hard day's work in the garden is done. Backyard is his first novel. Visit him at normandraper.com
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