The Constant Gardener is the profoundly moving story of a man whom tragedy elevates. The novel opens with the gruesome murder of the young and beautiful Tessa Quayle near northern Kenya's Lake Turkana, the birthplace of mankind. Her putative African lover and traveling companion, a doctor with one of the aid agencies, has vanished from the scene of the crime. Tessa's much The Constant Gardener is the profoundly moving story of a man whom tragedy elevates. The novel opens with the gruesome murder of the young and beautiful Tessa Quayle near northern Kenya's Lake Turkana, the birthplace of mankind. Her putative African lover and traveling companion, a doctor with one of the aid agencies, has vanished from the scene of the crime. Tessa's much older husband, Justin Quayle, amateur gardener and ineffectual bureaucrat, sets out on a personal odyssey in pursuit of the killers and their motive, and discovers his own resources and the extraordinary courage of the woman he barely had time to love.