The Lost Quilter
An Elm Creek Quilts Novel
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Jennifer Chiaverini’s bestselling Elm Creek Quilts series continues as Master Quilter Sylvia Bergstrom Compson’s exploration of her ancestry reveals unexpected connections between herself and long-lost visitor to Elm Creek Manor.
Master Quilter Sylvia Bergstrom Compson treasures a remarkable heirloom known as Birds in the Air, the Runaway Quilt, and the Elm Creek Quilt—each name honoring the woman who created it. That quilter was Joanna, a fugitive slave who traveled by the Underground Railroad to reach safe haven in 1859 at Elm Creek Farm.
Though Joanna was captured and forcibly returned to a plantation in Virginia, she left the Bergstrom family a most precious gift: her son. The Bergstrom family raised the boy as their own, and the secret of his identity died with their generation. Now it falls to Sylvia—drawing upon an old family diary and Joanna’s quilt—to connect Joanna’s past to present-day Elm Creek Manor.
Deftly weaving together Joanna’s harrowing story and acts of bravery with Sylvia’s present-day determination to uncover the truth, The Lost Quilter is a moving testament to resilience, love, and the power of art to carry freedom’s promise across time.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In her 14th series installment, Chiaverini picks up the threads from The Runaway Quilt to spin another tale of adventure, love, perseverance and, of course, quilting. When Sylvia Bergstrom Compson and her staff find a stash of old letters hidden in an antique desk in the manor's attic, the story whips back to 1859 to recount the travails of the formidable Joanna North, an escaped slave who spent a brief respite at Elm Creek Farm. Joanna is recaptured and sent back to the Virginia plantation she thought she had finally escaped, and is eventually dispatched to Charleston to work under her former master's demanding newlywed niece, Miss Evangeline. As the Civil War looms, Joanna learns that for a slave, nothing love, family, loyalty is sacred or certain, and she never ceases plotting her final escape in the patterns of her scrap quilting. This satisfying and redemptive narrative unfolds with cinematic clarity, and Joanna's journey is sure to have readers holding their breath for her until the last page.
