Back to the Garden

The novel alternates between two timelines, weaving together a present-day murder investigation with the history of a California commune from the 1970s. At its center is the Gardener Estate, a large property on California's Central Coast built by one of the most powerful families in the state and later transformed into a counterculture commune before becoming a public trust.

In the present day, Jen Bachus, the Estate's manager, oversees the relocation of a tilting outdoor statue called Midsummer Eves, a sixteen-foot-tall, three-headed sculpture by an artist known as Gaddo. When a crane lifts the statue from its concrete base, a human jawbone and clot of hair are exposed in the soil beneath. The local sheriff's office, overwhelmed by a recent triple homicide, cannot prioritize decades-old bones.

San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) Inspector Raquel Laing arrives as a Cold Case consultant for San Mateo County. Raquel is a sharp, socially awkward detective who walks with a cane due to a recent injury, with an extraordinary ability to read involuntary facial expressions, a skill honed under her partner, Al Hawkin, a legendary Homicide detective now working Cold Case. Years earlier, Al gave Raquel the murder book of Polly Lacewood, a blond teenager found under concrete at a demolished motel, along with a 1972 quarter as a bet, challenging her to find what he saw in the case. Raquel recognized that Polly's concealment was too practiced to be a first killing, launching their pursuit of a serial killer tabloids called "The Highwayman," who preyed on young, blond, hitchhiking women. The prime suspect, Michael Johnston, is a dying old man shackled to a hospital bed. His daughter's DNA ancestry test led to his identification, and a storage locker containing 19 single right shoes, trophies taken from victims, confirmed the scope of his crimes. Raquel trades confirmed identifications for new victim names in a race against Johnston's imminent death, leveraging her ability to read his desire for notoriety.

The bones at the Estate could be connected to Johnston, and Raquel's investigation runs along two parallel tracks: one leading into his hospital room and the other into the Estate's past.

Over a picnic lunch, Jen explains the Gardener family's troubled history. The patriarch, Thaddeus Gardener the Second, known as "the Old Bastard," was a controlling figure whose son died by suicide under circumstances the family disputed. He neglected his daughter Viola and raised his two grandsons, Rob and Fort (Thaddeus the Fourth), with scorn. When Rob returned from Vietnam in 1972, a confrontation with his grandfather ended with Rob smashing a bottle of whiskey into the fireplace, igniting a blaze, and walking away from the Estate.

After the grandfather's death in 1975, Rob inherited the Estate under the condition that he live there for five years. His partner, Meadow, a former lawyer turned commune organizer, pressured him to accept. The commune, called The Commons, relocated from Oregon to the California mansion, transforming its formal gardens into vegetable beds and its elegant rooms into communal spaces. Jerry Rathford, the family's young lawyer, became the commune's legal advisor.

In the Estate's Archives, Raquel finds photographs taken by Annabelle Paulson, a teenage single mother at the commune, documenting daily life. One photo is labeled "Mike and Wes moving the squash out of the path," a possible reference to Johnston. Mrs. Dalhousie, the Estate's retired archivist, retrieves additional records. Raquel finds no definitive proof of Johnston's presence until Al forwards a 1978 booking photo: Johnston was arrested at the Estate alongside a man named Max O'Connor and a hitchhiker wanted for rape. This confirms Johnston visited the grounds, though not that he killed there. As the investigation proceeds, Raquel and Jen grow close, sharing picnic lunches and walks across the grounds.

Fort Gardener returned from India in January 1979, having taken Indian citizenship. Quietly spiritual and hardworking, he earned the commune's respect but privately asked Rob to sell a 50-acre parcel of Estate land to fund his guru's ashram. Rob reluctantly agreed and kept the plan secret. Meanwhile, his relationship with Meadow was deteriorating.

The commune poured its energy into a public festival called "Back to the Garden." Gaddo's Midsummer Eves was to be the centerpiece, but a late discovery that the concrete base needed two weeks to cure forced a change: the stage was built directly over the rebar frame. On the night of the festival, Rob confronted Meadow about her other relationships, and she told him their partnership was over.

The next morning, Meadow was gone. Fort also vanished, and a postcard arrived from India announcing his return to the ashram. Without Meadow's organizing force, The Commons rapidly fell apart. When Gaddo returned to install the statue, she deliberately turned its Destroyer face, one of the sculpture's three visages, outward as revenge against Rob for driving Meadow away. Members drifted away, and David Kirkup, Viola's son, gradually took over management of the Estate.

In hospital sessions, Raquel shows Johnston photographs of commune members. His telltale involuntary reactions are absent for both Meadow and Annabelle; he does not recognize them as victims. Using the threat that O'Connor is claiming to be the real Highwayman, Raquel exploits Johnston's terror of being forgotten and pries all remaining victim names from him.

Rob Gardener emerges from his off-grid cabin for his first Board meeting. He reveals that Meadow is alive, living in France under the name Eve, farming organic greens. She left with Gaddo in 1979 and lived with her in Italy until Gaddo's death, then moved to southern France. Rob has written to her annually for 30 years.

The San Mateo coroner delivers a bombshell: the pelvis belongs to a male. The skull shows massive fractures from blows with a flat object, and a dental filling appears consistent with Indian dental technology. The body is Fort Gardener. The Highwayman connection evaporates.

Raquel constructs the case. David Kirkup devoted his life to the Estate yet was never accepted as a Gardener by name or inheritance. In David's own later account, he learned on the night of the festival that Fort planned to sell Estate land. Exhausted and having inhaled hours of secondhand marijuana smoke, David seized a shovel and struck Fort repeatedly, buried the body beneath the stage, and forged a postcard announcing Fort's return to India. For years afterward, he paid travelers to mail occasional cards from abroad.

Raquel realizes David is currently driving with Jen to Rob's remote cabin and may intend violence, since his own development proposal faces defeat at the upcoming Board meeting. Unable to reach anyone by phone, she asks her sister Dee, a reclusive online investigator, to find a back road and races to the cabin.

Raquel slips in through the back door and hides. Rob spots her cane behind a sideboard and, seeing her through a cracked door, silently understands the danger. David enters with a revolver, announcing his plan to stage a murder-suicide. Rob swings a cast-iron skillet into David's gun hand; the revolver fires twice, hitting no one. A second blow knocks David unconscious. Raquel handcuffs him and crosses the room to hold Jen.

Two weeks later, Raquel meets Al at their usual coffee shop. She has resigned from the SFPD: During the investigation, she crossed an ethical line by having Dee search for Johnston's victims in Mexico, identifying 11 women. Johnston is in a coma, and his daughter has signed a Do Not Resuscitate order. David has been charged with Fort's murder and is negotiating a plea. Raquel hands Al the murder book of Polly Lacewood, the cold case that started everything, closing the circle that began with a quarter and a challenge.