The Language of Flowers

I definitely owe a big thank you to the person in my book club who suggested Vanessa Diffenbaugh's The Language of Flowers (#357) as our January selection.  I probably would never have picked up this book on my own otherwise.  It's well worth the short time it will take you to read it.

We meet Victoria Jones just as she is about to age out of the San Francisco area foster system.  She's been considered unadoptable since she was ten, but she's now considered an adult at eighteen.  She's placed in temporary transitional housing to help her get started on her own, but Victoria isn't about to follow the system's rules now.  It's failed her her entire life, so why start now?  She soon finds herself homeless and out on the streets, an angry young woman with limited skills, no contacts and no means of supporting herself.  That is until the day she meets Renata, the florist, who hires her as hourly labor.  Victoria does have one deep pool of knowledge that can help her here; she understands the Victorian language of flowers, and the arrangements she creates are magical and fraught with meaning.

The story of how Victoria manages to turn her life around, gradually accepts that she can love and be loved and become part of a family from her past as well as her future is eloquently told through the language of flowers.  I suspect that there are many, many girls and young men like Victoria all over this country, and this novel does a service by illuminating the uphill battle many of them have to fight every day just to survive.  What is even more remarkable to me is that some of them, like Victoria, can even succeed and help to pull others out and up with them.  Her story is hard to put down.  Highly recommended and so is Ms. Diffenbaugh for trying to make a difference to these young people's lives through her Camellia Network to support their transition from foster care to independence.  Take a look for yourself at her website:  Camellia Network