I kind of wanted to despise Dominique Browning. She is the pale-blue-eyed editor of House ∧ Garden magazine, she has a fabulous house, she has a fantastic garden. And she’s named Dominique, for heaven’s sake. How glamorous is that? But you know, life is complicated, and nobody is perfect. In the course of reading Paths of Desire: The Passions of a Suburban Gardener, it becomes clear that Browning has had her share of mishaps and troubles, not least of which was the collapse of an old wall on her beloved perennial border. This is where Paths of Desire begins, and by the time I finished this story of a garden and its gardener, I was rooting for this funny woman. This is a gardening adventure story set among the intrigues of suburban New York. Will the tree man save the pin oak? Who’s been rooting around in the hostas? Browning’s travails will resonate with every suburbanite longing for a little order in the back yard.
Valiant Women is a vital and engrossing attempt to correct the record and rightfully celebrate the achievements of female veterans of World War II.
