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Love in the Time of Flowers is a story of a young girl finding her way through life. Shasta Daisy embarks on a journey of self-discovery, looking for the place she is meant to "grow.” Shasta journeys through life learning what it means to live through hardships, love, hatred, and everything in between. Throughout the course of her journey, Shasta experiences various hardships and learns how to overcome them all. She finds kinship with her Aunt Lily, a bond that transcends the traditional ties of extended family. There are numerous references to flowers in character names (such as Aunt Lily), descriptive characteristics, and character traits. It is an interesting way to bring symbolism and metaphors to the story.
This is a difficult book to read; there is so little space between words, lines, and paragraphs that everything begins to run together. There is also excessive use of large, rarely used words, such as remonstrance, aeration and Haeckelian anthropological classification obsolete. The use of these words and phrases renders this book almost unreadable without a dictionary handy. It also takes away from the effect of the story. It is difficult to figure out what the story is about, and what the characters are experiencing. The sentences are long, leave the reader almost breathless, and at times a little confused about what was actually said. There could be a lot of potential hidden in this novel beneath the ornate lexicon, but that potential is lost when the reader stumbles over pronunciation and meaning.