Into the Garden of Gethsemane, Georgia

Mrs. Abigail Fisher, the South’s Esteemed First Lady of Letters, is in a rut. Her writing career has collapsed, and she has become an embittered old woman living alone in a dilapidated house in Georgia. Only she’s not as alone as she thinks. One of her characters, Pistachio Simmons, who had been cut from Mrs. Fisher’s best-selling novel, The Garden of Gethsemane, Georgia, has returned to demand she be given the storyline she deserves. After Pistachio starts a fire in the kitchen, Mrs. Fisher is forced to summon her estranged daughter, Elise, back home. When Pistachio finds the deleted pages from her book, she begins to create her own chapters separate from the ones her author had given her. As Pistachio flourishes, Mrs. Abigail Fisher fades, and mother and daughter are forced to confront the failed plotlines of their own lives, including the one they’ve tried hardest to ignore—the story of the ghost-girl in the garden. Part magical realism, part meditation on the creative process, part old-fashioned ghost story, Into the Garden of Gethsemane, Georgia opens up the reader to the intimate world of a writer and the characters, real and imagined, who haunt her in the night.

About the Author

Laraine Herring holds and MFA in creative writing and an MA in counseling psychology. She has developed numerous workshops that use writing as a tool for healing grief and loss. She is the author of three novels: Gathering Lights: A Novel of San Francisco; Into the Garden of Gethsemane, Georgia, and Ghost Swamp Blues. Her books on writing include The Writing Warrior: Discovering the Courage to Free Your True Voice (voted one of the best books for writers from Poets & Writers magazine) and Writing Begins with the Breath: Embodying Your Authentic Voice. She is also the author of Lost Fathers: How Women Can Heal From Adolescent Father Loss and the short story collection Monsoons. Her short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in national and local publications. Her fiction has won the Barbara Deming Award for Women and her nonfiction work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She currently directs the creative writing program at Yavapai College in Prescott, Arizona and she teaches at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Massachusetts.

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