After a lifetime of loneliness in London, fourteen-year-old Anna is finally leaving the city to live with her aunt and uncle in the countryside town of Waverly, the home of her deceased mother. She anticipates a "new and bright life of freedom with green fields, flowers, and companions her age." However, when she arrives, she finds that things are not what they seem. Her efforts to please everyone—especially Aunt Sarah with her strict rules and aversion to Anna's desire to spend time with her grandfather—lead her to a desperate choice between what is right and what is easy. Surrounded by enticements for the finer things in life, she must search her heart and make a decision that will forever alter the course of her life. 

"Books of the highest value teach and inspire while they entertain. Thistle and Rose does just this. This wonderful story is full of beautiful messages, such as the one found in this passage of the book: 'It is so easy to value the wrong things most. They often look so attractive, and the best things lie so deeply hidden from us. And yet, to find them out and treasure them, and be true to them, makes the difference between a worthy and an unworthy life.'"

From The Good and the Beautiful reprint