A Series Of (Un)Fortunate Reviews

This is Barbara Claypole White's debut novel.  She's a British expatriate living in the U.S. and the book takes place both in the U.S. and in England. James Nealy is a man on a mission and barely hanging on by a fingernail.  He's a desperate man who sold everything back home in Illinois to move to North Carolina to take part in a therapy study that's become his last best hope of finally quieting his noisy mind, stilling his compulsive actions, and achieving finally some semblance of a 'normal' life with sound mental health.  To that end he has decided and become determined to create a garden in which he can work and in which he can find some relief from the noise in his disturbed mind.  To create this garden James seeks out Tilly, who owns a wholesale nursery and who is most determinedly not a landscape designer despite a very pushy assistant who tries to shove her in that direction and into James's path. Tilly is a widowed, single mother raising her s...