Whether you enjoy spending time outside admiring nature up close via hiking or days spent on the water, or you would rather nature come to you indoors with cut flowers or potted plants, there are fiction books that celebrate all aspects of nature. These novels incorporate the settings of their stories to make nature seem like another character, intersecting with the plot in unique ways. Explore these novels and discover how they bring the natural world to life within their pages.
What the River Keeps
By Cheryl Grey Bostrom
Cheryl Grey Bostrom is known for writing novels where the Pacific Northwest takes center stage; author Taryn R. Hutchinson has said that Cheryl “draws her characters with an artist’s brush and exquisitely renders the natural world.” What the River Keeps is no exception.
The contemporary novel is set near the Elwha River in Washington State, where Hildy is a successful biologist who’s reluctantly returned home to be closer to her ailing mother. As she works to restore the river to its former glory, Hildy will need to confront the past that continues to haunt her.
Foreword Review says, “intricate vistas and lush natural details backdrop Hildy’s story,” and Publishers Weekly mentioned that “the novel is brightened by lush, atmospheric landscape descriptions.”
If you’re looking for more women’s fiction set in the Pacific Northwest, be sure to check out Cheryl’s earlier novels, Sugar Birds and Leaning on Air.
This Promised Land
By Cathy Gohlke
Before recently retired Master Gardner Ginny can realize her dream of working in the greenhouse of an English estate, Ginny is surprised to learn that she’s inherited her estranged family’s Christmas tree farm in Virginia. Returning to Virginia to see about selling the farm, she ends up clashing with her Vietnam vet nephew and his young children.
As she figures out her next steps, Ginny works to help her young family members appreciate the nature around them, including teaching them about the language of flowers, that each blossom and leaf in a bouquet can communicate sentiments from the sender to receiver.
In a starred review, Library Journal said This Promised Land is “infused with wry humor and the beautiful language of flowers and plants,” and author Carrie Turansky endorsed the novel by saying, “Authentic, rich storytelling and descriptions bring the era, people, and land to life.”
As a bonus, read this guest post by Cathy Gohlke about how she finds inspiration for her novels.
Heirlooms
By Sandra Byrd
This dual timeline women’s fiction saga spans generations to focus on two sets of grandmothers and granddaughters on Whidbey Island in Washington.
In the historical storyline, Helen and Eunhee are military widows who retreat to a farmhouse and garden to find a way forward in a post-war world. Decades later, their granddaughters Cassidy and Grace return to the farmhouse and discover a chest in the attic, revealing hidden secrets. As they come to terms with the past, Cassidy begins to restore her grandmother’s beloved garden.
Throughout the story, growing plants is a huge focus: Helen and Eunhee grow a post-war victory garden that provided for their needs while getting settled; and Cassidy has a passion for flowers that she inherits from spending time with her grandmother. Publishers Weekly agrees, saying Heirlooms’ “lush and vivid prose brings the setting to life.”
Read more about how Sandra Byrd was inspired to write this multi-generational novel.
A Piece of the Moon
By Chris Fabry
A small town in West Virginia is the backdrop for this novel about a treasure hunt and the country radio DJs that get drawn into it after a tragedy.
Filled with Chris Fabry’s familiar Southern voice and quirky townspeople on the hunt, the novel also has a wonderful sense of place in the fictional town of Emmaus. From Waite, one of the DJs, admiring the early-morning “soundtrack of crickets and katydids along with his truck’s idle” to one treasure hunter taking time to admire the “trees and hills and lichen-covered rocks, gorgeous and untouched as Eden” as he searches the nearby mountains, readers will enjoy the descriptions.
Library Journal did as well, saying, “The rural south comes to life.” And one Goodreads reviewer says that it’s the perfect book to take camping: “That peaceful, nature-surrounded environment helped me feel closer to the setting of this story and the characters in it.”
To add more ambiance to the reading experience, listen to the A Piece of the Moon theme song.
