Minerva's Fox

One woman’s journey, a story of self-discovery

Malorie Ellsworth’s life is about to change for the better. Or so she believes.

Ahead of her lie graduate school and a teaching career; behind her, a traumatic childhood and the turmoil of her parents’ acrimonious divorce. Within weeks of beginning graduate school, she’s enmeshed in a dog-eat-dog academic world, struggling to make a go of it.

Unwilling to curry favor to get ahead, devastated by a colleague’s plagiarism of her work, Malorie moves to France, to the village of Flagy, whose landscape and history revive her passion for drawing. When she discovers her talent for garden design, she knows she has found her calling.

On her return to the U.S., Malorie develops a career as a garden designer and gains recognition for her innovative, naturalistic work. Meanwhile, she faces the formidable challenges of step-parenting, infertility, and her husband’s battle with Lyme disease. When a former lover reappears, Malorie is forced to revisit a painful episode from her past.

With its fine-tuned balance of dialogue, narrative, and description, Minerva’s Fox places the reader at the heart of each scene in this unforgettable account of one woman’s bid to understand herself and make peace with her past.

Kristina Baer lives in Monterey, California, with her husband. She published Leo Spitzer on Language and Literature in 1991 (Modern Language Association, New York, New York) and Captured Views: Impressions of Ten Gardens in 2006 (The Third & Elm Press, Newport, RI). She has exhibited her photographs and poems at the Pacific Grove Art Center (Pacific Grove, California). Born in Montpelier, Vermont, she has lived and traveled in Europe and the U.S.