Rose Daughter

Rose Daughter is the second of Robin McKinley's two novels drawn from the story of Beauty and the Beast. It was published by Greenwillow Books in 1997, more than fifteen years after her first retelling of the same tale, and it gives Beauty a gardener's gift instead of a scholar's.

Beauty's father is a merchant whose trading ships are lost at sea, and his creditors leave the family almost nothing except a house in the countryside called Rose Cottage, which was willed to Beauty and therefore lies beyond their reach. The garden of the cottage is a tangle of unfamiliar thorny bushes that the townspeople identify as roses, and the plants bloom under Beauty's hands until her sisters can sell wreaths of them to keep the household fed.

When word comes that one of the merchant's ships has reached port, he asks each daughter what she would like him to bring back, and Beauty asks for a rose. He finds the cargo already claimed by his creditors, leaves the city in bad weather on a borrowed pony, loses his way in a snowstorm and is given food, fire and a bed in a castle where he sees no one. On his way out he notices a rose laid on a table and takes it for his daughter.