Think green. We hear the phrase all the time, but it resonates on a deeper level with me. Way back, when my kids were little and I was desperate to get out of the house and go somewhere soothing, I discovered a plant nursery. It was maybe twenty minutes from my home, but light years removed. Here, with my boys in a stroller, I spent hours all-told wandering up and down aisles of green plants, smelling damp earth, basking in filtered sun, inhaling moist, healthy air. This was my personal spa in the days before spas were in style.

I bought my share of houseplants and tried to recapture a bit of the serenity in my own home, but three young boys had a way of negating the effect. By the time they were in school and my days were more quiet, I was writing up a storm and not thinking about plants. But I never completely forgot that greenhouse escape.

I've recreated a bit of it in While My Sister Sleeps. Snow Hill is the family business, and though it covers acres of land and sells trees, shrubs, and all sorts of garden accessories, the pièce de resistance - Molly Snow's domain - is the greenhouse. Molly works here. She also escapes here, finding the same moments out of time under the fronds of lush ferns and palms that I did. My hope is that readers will enjoy the escape, too.