Book excerpt: A sickly and depressed fourteen-year-old boy with no gleam of hope lives isolated from the outside world along with his mother and father within the walls of a frighteningly dark garden. He is the thirteenth child of the family. All of his older brothers and sisters have died and are buried in the family graveyard at the back of the manor. The day he was born coincided with the beginning of a string of deaths. His brothers and sisters began dying one every year, each under suspicious circumstances before they reached the age of fifteen. By family tradition, fifteen is considered the age of adulthood, and the age at which each child must make the momentous decision to leave the garden permanently or stay and carry on the fam¬¬¬ily name. On the threshold of the age of fifteen, this nameless boy spends his days deep in thought and fearful speculation about his own predicament. He is distrusting of his own mother and father because they demonstrate a certain animosity toward one another and blame each other for the deaths of each one of their children. Prior to the boy's fifteenth birthday, his father secretly invites him to escape together from the garden, and devises a plan in order to achieve this. But the next morning, the boy discovers that his father has disappeared without a trace. From this point on, he and his mother live alone in the manor. The threat of danger has strangely subsided and the boy reaches the age of adulthood, such that he comes to believe that the real killer of his brothers and sisters had been his father all along, since the atmosphere in the manor and garden since his escape has become calm and peaceful. Mother plans to arrange a marriage for her son with a young girl from a nearby garden similar to their own to help carry on the generations. A peculiar old man, who enters the manor through a hidden door in a closet, helps facilitate this arranged marriage. The boy gains a sense of confidence after marriage. He takes on the responsibilities of running the manor. He spends happy days with his wife Eiyla, who teaches him how to do many household tasks. One blissful year passes but Eiyla still does not conceive a child, and then she too subsequently dies. Since the boy had loved her, he becomes despondent in his grief for her. One night as he walks in the garden under the moonlight, the ghosts of his deceased brothers and sisters appear to him. They help him discover the body of his father at the bottom of the dried-up well at the back of the garden. This means his father had not escaped after all, which also means that his father could not have been the killer. The boy feels compelled to get to the bottom of all these mystifying events. His distrust for his mother is compounded by the mysterious death of his father. He must now learn to survive on his own while uncovering the evil inside the garden and find out the reason behind all these suspicious deaths. His discovery opens his eyes to the outside world and propels him forward on what becomes his life's mission.