Book Synopsis

A story of love, marriage, and flowers from beloved writer and gardening enthusiast Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn

It begins with an ending. Six months before they were to be married, Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn's fiancée broke off their engagement, leaving her stunned and reeling. Looking for stability -- and health insurance -- she married a friend instead. Then, while sharing a home and tending to a garden together, the marriage of convenience turned into a marriage of love.

In science, art, and mythology, we cannot help but to see flowers as metaphors for the fleeting nature of youth, vitality, and love. While it's easy to casually admire something beautiful, it requires a closer look to appreciate the effort that produces that beauty. In I Have This Thing For Flowers, Sawchyn does just that, likening the many flowers she has grown in her garden to a range of relationships and activities from motherhood to ex-boyfriends to Greek mythology.

Cataloguing all of the great romances of her life like an herbarium of flowers preserved from the garden, Sawchyn examines the kinds of love that can't be explained.

Review Quotes

"Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn writes with clarity and courage about marriage, illness, and care, reminding us that devotion isn't a feeling so much as a choice we make again and again. These finely crafted essays demonstrate that to love flowers (and each other)--to keep showing up for them--is to insist on gentleness in a world that so often rushes past it." -Aimee Nezhukumatathil, New York Times bestselling author of World of Wonders

About the Author

Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn is a writer, editor, and educator living in Western North Carolina. Formerly the Editor-in-Chief of The Rumpus magazine, she has received fellowships from the Kenyon Review and the Sewanee Writers' Conferences. Their first essay collection, A Fish Growing Lungs, was a finalist for The Believer Book Awards.