The Forbidden Orchid

Gr 7 Up—Elodie Buchanan grows up the eldest of 10 girls with an almost constantly absent father. Though she has never left her home village, she dreams of accompanying her father to the far-off places where he journeys in search of rare and unknown plants. Being a young woman in the 1861 English countryside, Elodie finds adventure hard to achieve. She tries instead to connect with her father by working with plants at home. She comes to love the single precious flower she miraculously gets to bloom. This orchid, forbidden to her because of its shape and her sex, is symbolic of Elodie's passion and quest for adventure. When tragedy strikes and Elodie's father is wounded in both mind and body during the opium wars, she gathers her courage and travels to London and eventually to China to help him. She finds her longed-for adventure and unexpected romance on her sea journey and travels through China in search of orchids. Waller does an excellent job of setting the scene in both time and place in this historical novel filled with adventure, romance, and plant biology. Readers are drawn into Elodie's journey of discovery as she succeeds in finding the forbidden orchid, love, and her own freedom from strict Victorian societal norms. The extensive back matter contains author's notes and a bibliography giving information about both the era and specific topics of the book.