Evelina's Garden

"Evelina's Garden" by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman is a poignant story set in the Victorian era in a small village, focusing on the life of Evelina Adams, who withdraws into her magnificent garden after her father's death, using that place as a symbol for her unspoken dreams. Sequestered and communicating minimally with the village, she finds her world disrupted with the arrival of a young cousin, also named Evelina, and both find themselves drawn to the same man, Thomas Merriam, the town's minister. As the story builds to a climax, it's through a courageous act of renunciation by the younger Evelina that the novel resolves, showcasing themes of selfless love and the breaking of societal obligations of inheritance.