The Wild Dark Flowers: A Novel of Rutherford Park

When May came that year in Rutherford, it was more beautiful than anyone could ever remember. More beautiful, and more terrible …

From inside their sprawling estate of Rutherford Park, the Cavendish family had a privileged perspective of the world. On the first morning in May, 1915, with a splendid view that reached across the gardens to the Vale of York, nothing seemed lovelier or less threatening. And yet …

At the risk of undoing the Cavendish name with scandal, William and Octavia Cavendish have been living a lie, maintaining a marriage out of duty rather than passion. But when their son Harry joins the Royal Flying Corps in France, the Cavendish family are forced to face the unavoidable truths about themselves, the society in which they thrive, and the secrets they can no longer bear.

In the wake of a terrible war, the emotional shifts between a husband and a wife, a wife and her lover, and a mother and her children, will shake the very foundation of the Cavendish family, and change the uniquely vulnerable lives of all who reside at Rutherford Park.
Praise for Rutherford Park

‘A breathtakingly beautiful book.’

Kate Furnivall, author of Shadows on the Nile

‘Elegantly depicts the lives within an English country house on the cusp of a new age.’

Natasha Solomons, author of The Gallery of Vanished Husbands

‘Thank you, Elizabeth Cooke, for a wonderful story and the promise of another.’

Kelly Jones, author of The Woman Who Heard Color

Readers Guide Inside