THE FORGOTTEN GARDEN, by Kate Morton

The Forgotten Garden is a combination of many things: part fairy tale, part family saga, and part mystery, stirred together with a dash of Dickens and a sprinkling of Frances Hodgson Burnett. The finished product is a thoroughly absorbing novel.
The story begins in 1913, with a four-year-old girl who is hidden aboard a ship sailing from London to Australia. She's told to wait in her hiding place until the woman who put her there comes back. The woman never returns.
When the child is discovered at the end of the voyage, the dock master and his wife take her in and raise her as their own. On her twenty-first birthday, "Nell" learns the circumstances of her life in Australia and sets out to discover who she really is. The Forgotten Garden moves between Australia, London, and the Cornish coast, but not until Nell dies and her granddaughter continues the search are all the pieces of Nell's life assembled.
Australian author Morton does an impeccable job of holding the reader in thrall. The Forgotten Garden is one of the best novels I've read in a long time. This book will go on my 'keeper' shelf.