Due to a mistake I chose to read Quakertown by Lee Martin.

It was listed as a mystery, and I’m a great lover of mysteries. Because the main character is a gardener and it takes place in Texas, I snapped it up right away.

It is not a mystery. But I’m glad of the mistake because this turned out to be a great book.

The story is based on an actual historical event. There really was once a black community called Quakertown in the heart of Denton Texas. But in the 1920’s town leaders prevailed upon the citizens to move their houses outside of town so that the community could be turned into a public park.

In the book’s telling of the story this was accomplished in part due to the efforts of a black citizen named Little Jones, the town’s most accomplished gardener, who is promised the job of park gardener in return for persuading his neighbors to leave town. But it’s also a story about the gardener’s daughter and her love for two men – one a white man without the courage to stand up for her, and the other a black man with too much courage.

I was reminded of those Victorian novels by George Eliot and Thomas Hardy that we read as schoolchildren. Seemingly unrelated events unfurl at the same time and then collide and cause characters to become forever inter-related. The author is very good at describing social conventions of the small town, racial tensions at the end of the World War and at developing the reasons for actions of its characters.

I was a little surprised that the town and its citizens seemed both just a little more urban and a little more southern than I would have imagined it to be at that time and place.  But I don’t know enough to argue that it should be otherwise.

Highly recommended.