Petals - Marti Eicholz

When Mary Turner entered the world, she was already her parents’ least-favorite child. Filled with ambition but always seeming to be lacking some crucial skill, Mary left home immediately after graduating high school and set her sights on the endless horizon before her. Mary had had a difficult childhood; when she was young, her grandparents had died in a tragic accident that left the entire family—especially her father, Kenneth—shrouded in a heavy grief. Once on her own, Mary kept her eyes fixed on the future, and soon that future came to include a man named Adam.

Though Adam and Mary had a difficult relationship, they eloped in Las Vegas and returned home a (mostly) happily married couple; it wasn’t much later that they became first-time parents. After Scotty was born, however, Mary began exhibiting concerning symptoms. She struggled to bond with her child and experienced increasingly volatile emotional swings. Soon after, Mary was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Mary struggled to cope with her mental illness, and as the years passed, she began turning to drugs and alcohol to soothe her aching mind. She began neglecting, and eventually abusing, Scotty, and the family quickly started to deteriorate. Eventually deciding that Adam and Scotty would be better off without her, Mary packed up her car and ran away to Las Vegas, where she made the bulk of her money by moving illegal drugs. Her time there was a thrilling and dangerous whirlwind, but Mary knew it had to come to an end eventually. Next, she landed in Sedona, Arizona, where she led a quiet, peaceful life, nothing like the one she’d left behind in Vegas.

Still, Mary knew she would need to return home and reconnect with the family she’d abandoned. Instead of finding Adam, Mary found Luke, an old friend and fellow addict. Once reunited with Luke, Mary quickly fell in love with him and agreed to help him smuggle drugs out of the country. She was caught at the Dublin airport, however, and sent to prison, where she learned she was pregnant with Luke’s child. Her child was taken from her to live with her father.

Petals also offers a deeply poignant and introspective look into the many facets of mental illness, substance abuse and recovery, death, heartbreak, joy, and forgiveness. It is through its diverse cast of characters that the reader is allowed a look into the minds and senses of all those touched by Mary’s journey. Best suited for readers who enjoy fast-paced action combined with a deeply emotional and introspective narrative, Petals is a multi-generational story of everyday humans who must learn to cut their own paths amid the wild, yet heartbreakingly beautiful, garden that is life.