THE FORGOTTEN GARDEN by Kate Morton, 2009.

A sprawling story spanning three generations, involving an abandoned child in 1913 Australia, a talented writer of fairy tales, and a granddaughter who discovers a new life for herself on the coast of Cornwall. When a little girl arrives at Brisbane all alone and unable to even say her name, the dockmaster and his wife adopt her, name her Nell and raise her as their own. On her 21st birthday, she's told the truth about her adoption and given a little suitcase with a few clothes and a lovely old book of fairy tales that had been in her possession when she arrived in Australia.The knowledge changes her very life, and she begins a search to find out about her past. Following slender clues, her quest leads her to the Cornish coast in England, to Blackhurst Manor, the Mountrachet family, and a dark web of secrets and lies and false hopes. As she learns more concerning the "Authoress," Eliza Makepeace, who wrote the beautiful fairy tales; the handsome artist Alexander Walker; the maidservant Mary, the overbearing, unkind Adeline and her daughter Rose, Nell realizes that her story is more tangled than she could have realized. She manages to piece together much of her past and comes close to solving the mystery of her identity, but it's left to her granddaughter, Cassandra, to discover the dark secret of the forgotten garden at Cliff Cottage on the estate and at long last put all the pieces together and solve the puzzle. Beautifully written (if a bit overlong), with an involving narrative, rich with interesting and almost Dickensian characters (Mansell and the Swindells most definitely), the reader gets sucked into the mystery almost immediately.The relationship between the cousins--the talented, determined and loyal Eliza Makepeace and the lovely but doomed Rose Mountrachet--is excellently portrayed. This is a book stuffed with characters and events, and if at times the shifting of the time periods was a bit confusing, the story clicks with an almost Gothic atmosphere in the Cornish setting, the characters are well drawn and the storyline intriguing. I found it an entertaining, at times comforting sort of read, much like the old fashioned sagas of Dorothy Eden or Susan Howatch.