Despite her circumstances, she is not bitter. Her letters to her family back home are full of gratitude for all they have done for her. She writes one to her Mama, one to her Papa, and one to her 'dearest' Grandma. Once Lydia is on the train, she begins writing letters to her family at home. In this letter, Lydia shares 'three important things' with her uncle that she is too shy to share with him face to face. The second letter she writes to her uncle, dated September 3, 1935, she mails from the train station. The first letter, dated August 27, 1935, she writes from home while she is packing for her trip. The first two letters she writes to her Uncle Jim explaining why she is coming to live with him. The entire story is told through the letters Lydia writes back and forth to her family while she is on this journey. Although she is completely happy living at home and doesn't want to leave, she decides to head to the city with a positive attitude. In the illustration, she is seen smiling and handing a ripened tomato to a jovial woman. When you first open the book, there is a picture of Lydia and her grandmother picking tomatoes in their garden. Even though she loves her family very much and doesn't want to leave, Lydia packs her bags and heads to the city with all kinds of seeds, stationery on which to write her letters, and a passion for gardening that she inherited from her grandmother. He has two employees who work for him, Ed and Emma Beech. They can no longer afford to take care of her, so they send her to live with her Uncle Jim who is a cantankerous, old man who owns a bakery. Set during the Depression, Lydia discovers that she has to go live in the 'big gray city' because her father is out of work, and her mother's seamstress business has waned. The story is told in first-person point of view by Lydia Grace Finch through a series of letters she writes to her Uncle Jim, her Mama, her Papa, and her Grandma. Sarah Stewart's The Gardener is a sentimental story about a little girl who brightens the lives of everyone she meets.

The Gardener by Sarah Stewart