About the Author
Lesley Hanson
Lesley Hanson writes from a quiet corner of Ohio, where most of her days look fairly ordinary right up until she sits down to write about gardens that remember, soldiers who shouldn't feel anything, and the kind of love that costs something to keep.
She's drawn to stories that live in the space between enemy and ally, duty and want — stories that go through the valley rather than around it, and come out the other side carrying flowers. That's the tension that makes a reader root for two people who, by every rule of the world they're in, should never end up together.
Sorrowroot is her debut novel and the first book in The Windsown Trilogy. She's currently at work on Book Two, Nightbloom.
“The warrior came with sword drawn and heart hardened, for he had been forged in the fires of obedience. He knew not love, for love had been burned from him. He knew only duty, only orders, only the cold burden of chains. But when she looked upon him, he saw something in her eyes he had forgotten how to name.”
— from Sorrowroot
Behind Sorrowroot
The idea for Sorrowroot started with a single line from Rumi — "What you seek is seeking you" — and a question that wouldn't leave Lesley alone: what if the person sent to destroy your whole world turned out to be the one thing in it worth keeping? The rest of the trilogy grew out from there: a girl who talks to gardens, a commander bound by an oath he never chose, and a buried book that remembers what an empire tried to erase.
Read About Sorrowroot