The new book by Maya Tzur

The Gardenof Eve

From a girl walking to school in torn shoes to a woman who has built a life in full bloom. A story of love, faith, money and becoming.

Get the book → Read the first pages

17Chapters

4Seasons of a life

1Jar of coins

Portrait of Maya Tzur in an olive shirt — “The hole is not the end of the story.”Maya Tzur

The story

She bought her first shoes with a jar of coins.

Maya lost her father at eight. Her mother worked two jobs, and Maya raised her little brother after school. At eleven she walked to school with water coming through a hole in her shoe, and decided she would buy the next pair herself.

Today she is an entrepreneur and sought-after adviser, a wife, a mother of three, a runner, and the person everyone calls when they need someone. She has never raised her voice, and she knows everyone.

The Garden of Eve is the story of everything in between: the first job, the year she nearly lost it all, the love that found her, and the faith that carried her.

Maya

Inside the book

Four seasons
of one life

Every chapter ends with one line Maya learned the hard way, and one question for you to carry into your own life.

Roots

A mother’s hands, a brother’s laugh and a shoe with a hole in it.

01The year my father left the table
02Mama’s hands
03A jar of coins
04The girl who studied by the window

Rising

Learning to knock, to listen, and to be glad she was let in.

05The first door
06The year I looked rich
07Everyone I know
08A business at my kitchen table
09I never raise my voice

III

Love

The one thing she could not earn, save or plan.

10Daniel
11The marriage we keep choosing
12Desire
13Three heartbeats

Abundance

Not how much you hold, but how much you can give without fear.

14Money is a seed
15The body that carries me
16A quiet place within
17What success really looks like

From every ten coins that come to you, one belongs to the person you will become.

Chapter 3 · A jar of coins

First pages

It begins with a shoe.

Read the opening of the prologue, then keep the jar in mind. You will meet it again.

Prologue

The shoes

On the morning my daughter Ella turned twelve, I gave her two presents. The first was a pair of shoes, which she had chosen herself and which she loved. The second was an empty jam jar with a dented lid. She turned it in her hands, politely confused, and asked me what it was for.

“It is the most valuable thing I own,” I told her. “And this book is the story of why.”

The left shoe went first. It was a brown school shoe, a size too big when Mama bought it so that it would last, and by the winter I was eleven the sole had opened at the front like a small mouth. When it rained, the water came in. When it was dry, little stones came in instead.

I learned to walk on the outside of my foot so that no one would see the hole, and I learned to sit with my feet tucked under the chair so that no one would see the way I walked.

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