Forgotten Flowers: A Novel of Redemption and Second Love

With his wife’s memory lost due to a traumatic brain injury, Daniel Kilgore volunteered at Magnolia Garden, an assisted living facility, hoping he could learn how to resurrect his wife’s fading memories. He was drawn to three residents, Delores Samuels, Mary Hillman, and Sandra Cotton. Why were they placed there, only to be forgotten? Daniel knew they had lives that deserved to be remembered. Mary’s husband, George, Sandra’s son, Jim, and Delores’s son Fred would endure their own emotional epiphany causing them to go to the Gardens for atonement. Would it be in time? His wife’s caretaker, Dr. Jane Lincoln, would expose Kilgore’s own emotional confliction between his past and their future. He would struggle with the memories of his past and the chance to make new memories. With unconscionable greed, George Hillman destroyed his wife’s dream of being a mother. As her health and mind faded, and faced with round the clock home care, George placed Mary in Magnolia Gardens. He took solace in the arms of Gilda Ellis, a decision that would have dire consequences.  Sandra Cotton was more of a mother than a grandmother to her son, Jim’s two children, Samantha and William. She soothed their scrapes and bruises, eased the pains of puppy love, and nurtured their dreams. An unwed mother at eighteen was more than Jim’s wife, Carrie would take. Samantha was sent to live with her sister in North Carolina and put the baby up for adoption. The sound of Samantha's voice, hearing her laughter was the very air her grandmother lived for, without it Sandra wallowed in depression, and eventually lost any sense of reality. Through a friend, Jim and Carrie placed Jim’s mother in Magnolia Gardens. Delores Samuels struggled to live on her own. Her son, Fred, traveled extensively due to work and had little time to look in on her. Fred’s wife, Shelia, was devoted to herself and offered no relief. Delores’s other son, Mitchell and his wife, Brenda, were her primary caretakers. Mitchell’s untimely death in an automobile accident in which Brenda held Shelia responsible for forced Fred to focus on his mother’s decline mental state. Sandra’s care was more than Brenda and Fred could handle. Sandra’s doctor recommended they place Sandra in Magnolia Gardens. He volunteered at Magnolia Gardens to give dignity and worth to the forgotten. Learning to draw out old memories from frail minds was Daniel Kilgore’s other reason. His wife, Vivian, a paraplegic was suffering from memory loss. A visit to his mother would clear the other. When Brenda Samuels told Fred about her visit with his mother, Fred faced his failings. He didn’t like what he saw. When she needed him the most, Fred had failed his mother, but no more. Fate would play a cruel hand in the three men’s plan, but she would be much kinder to Daniel and Jane. She convinced him old memories and new ones were not mutually exclusive. He convinced her risk making new ones.