The Sunflower Forest

The Sunflower Forest
Torey Hayden

Bestselling author Torey Hayden’s novel poignantly tells of a daughter’s attempt to grow up in the shadow of her mother’s haunted past. Warm, melancholy and evocatively rendered this book captures the essence of a family touched by sadness.A haunting tale of a family who can't escape the consequences of their mother's tormented childhood. Hayden, a master storyteller, again turns her talent to fiction in this novel that combines a psychological thriller with a nuanced family drama.Lesley’s Hungarian mother Mara – charming, childlike, lovable – is traumatized by her adolescent Holocaust experiences.Though her American husband and daughters try to live a normal life, Mara holds them thrall to her moods and quirks. Lesley struggles to understand, but dealing with Mara is a severe strain which sets her apart from her peers.But when Mara’s psychosis results in tragedy, Lesley goes to Wales in search of her mother’s remembered joy.

Torey Hayden

The Sunflower Forest

A novel

Contents

Cover (#u0d33a940-5b15-5a8e-b2a5-740a44868605)

Title Page (#ua46cf291-d6ca-56ff-a8d9-47c4b19f77f2)

Chapter One (#u303be433-8a21-5c51-b492-6f5039d0c64d)

Chapter Two (#uc02af167-3666-54ea-bc29-16d2420f1092)

Chapter Three (#u2dbe99cd-6c52-5ce0-a796-3170d49c49ce)

Chapter Four (#ub33c4a65-602c-50a9-b0d1-8e2c8e010db7)

Chapter Five (#u0a2642d4-7c49-50fb-a224-1d96639bdde4)

Chapter Six (#u9fedbc02-f6f4-5fc0-b177-4852e2271b49)

Chapter Seven (#uaf580d59-be2d-5e88-8ae8-70201e2f2c8e)

Chapter Eight (#u5942b99e-2071-5a80-82e3-31e581f017b5)

Chapter Nine (#ud190ce59-7fb3-5f31-b818-063b94eb4d6e)

Chapter Ten (#ud0be65ad-cf2d-521d-9843-d8d8ce1cf553)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-one (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-two (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-three (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-one (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-two (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-three (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-five (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter One (#ulink_2d1ac6c3-f621-55a1-b500-3a9c98e3cc95)

In that year what I wanted most was a boyfriend. I was seventeen and had never had a date. I had the rest: breasts, hair under my arms, my period, the desire. I certainly had the desire.

Once, when I was little and not too informed about the mechanics, my best friend and I had pretended to make love, our legs spread apart scissor-fashion, until we were crotch to crotch, one person’s sneaker under the other person’s nose. My grandmother had caught us at it. She sent Cecily home and spanked me with a wooden mixing spoon and made me sit in the pantry to say Hail Marys. There was no doubt in her mind, she said: I got such interests from my mother. Perhaps I did. However, even at that tender age, I had decided that they weren’t such bad interests to have.

Nonetheless, I had reached seventeen with nothing more than a valentine from Wayne Carmelee and three kisses stolen by a Danish Eagle Scout under the bleachers at the county fair in Sandpoint, Idaho.

This was a source of great personal dismay to me and not helped at all by my sister Megan, who was nine that year and always willing to confirm for me that I was just as ugly as I assumed I must be. She also suggested that I probably smelled bad to boys.