Book 1

Tending Roses

by Lisa Wingate

Published 1 June 2001
A young woman living on a remote Missouri farm and struggling to care for her husband, baby, and ailing grandmother, Katie Benson seeks inspiration in dealing with the vicissitudes of life in the pages of her grandmother's journal.

Book 2

Good Hope Road

by Lisa Wingate

Published 6 May 2003
In a time of crisis, two women come together and set off down a road of hope in this novel in the Tending Roses series from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Before We Were Yours.
 
Twenty-year-old Jenilee Lane, whose dreams are as narrow as the sky is wide, doesn’t imagine any good could come out of the tornado that has ripped across the Missouri farmland where she makes her home. But some inner spark compels her to take action. To rescue her elderly neighbor Eudora Gibson from the cellar in which she’s been trapped. To make her way to the nearby town of Poetry, where the townspeople have begun to gather in the only building left standing. To collect from the devastated landscape fragments of life that lie strewn about in the tornado’s wake: letters, photographs, and mementos that might mean something to people who have lost everything.
 
Eudora Gibson didn’t think Jenilee had it in her. But the girl she’s hardly noticed for years is now surprising her—stepping forward with a bravery that inspires Eudora to face her own bitter past. Brought close by tragedy, the two will learn lessons about the resilience of the human spirit and the ties that make a community strong. And together, they will travel to a place that once lay beyond their dreams.

Book 3

The Language of Sycamores

by Lisa Wingate

Published 4 January 2005
Karen Sommerfield has been hiding from life-immersing herself in a high-powered job-until the day the company downsizes her out of a job and the doctor tells her that she may have cancer. It's a double blow that sends Karen on a search for herself in the last place she ever thought to look: Grandma Rose's old farm.As Karen's hectic schedule falls away, she opens up to the unexpected. In the quiet of the Missouri Ozarks, she hears the soft, secret language of the sycamore trees, and discovers answers and a joy to make her life complete.

Book 4

Drenched in Light

by Lisa Wingate

Published 27 June 2006
A woman struggling to find her way forward discovers hope in her bond with a troubled young girl in this heartfelt novel in the Tending Roses series from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Lost Friends and Before We Were Yours.

Once a gifted ballet dancer, Julia Costell understands the joy of body and soul lost in a perfect moment. But after buckling under the demands of a professional dance career, she’s landed with a thud in an unglamorous job as a guidance counselor at a performing arts school. Living back home with her parents and feeling lost, Julia is afraid she’ll never soar again—until the day young Dell Jordan is sent to her office.

In Dell’s writing, Julia recognizes not only her own despair, but also luminous sparks of hope. But as Julia fights to forge a brighter future for one disadvantaged student, she is drawn into startling undercurrents of conflict and denial within the academy. Now, as she is tested in ways she never imagined, Julia begins to discover that even though her life has seemed off course, she’s been on the right path all along...