The Runaway Quilt - Book Beginnings on Friday and The Friday 56

     The Runaway Quilt is one of my favorite stories in Jennifer Chiaverini's "Elm Creek Quilts" series. If you enjoy family history, if you're curious about the Civil War (and the underground railroad), if you're a quilter, or if you like to read about friendships between women, you'll like this book too. The story takes place in present day but goes back into the past as the main character, Sylvia, reads an ancestor's diary, written during the Civil War.
     The Runaway Quilt is the fourth book in this series, but it stands alone. However, as with most series, you'll get to know the characters better if you start with the first book (The Quilter's Apprentice).

Book Beginning:
     When her sister, Claudia, died childless at the age of seventy-seven, Sylvia Bergstrom Compson became the last living descendant of Hans and Anneke Bergstrom and the sole heir to what remained of their fortune. Or so she had thought. She had certainly searched long and hard enough for someone else who could assume responsibility of Elm Creek Manor, for as difficult as it was to believe now, at the time she had thought the estate in rural central Pennsylvania too full of unhappy memories to become her home again. Her lawyer had told her she was the sole heir, an opinion corroborated by her private detective.
     Now she wondered if they had overlooked something, a familial connection lost to memory but documented in a thread-bare antique quilt.

The Friday 56 (This excerpt is from Page 156 in the trade paperback edition):
One of those seats had a block with a black center square, and if pushed in just the right way, the wooden slats folded into a hidden recess beneath the bench like a rolltop desk, revealing a hiding place beneath the gazebo. According to family lore, fugitive slaves would conceal themselves in the hiding place until nightfall, when one of the Bergstroms would escort them into the safety of the manor.

Genre: Women's Fiction / Mystery / Crafts & Hobbies
Length: 329 Pages (trade paperback)
Amazon Link: The Runaway Quilt
Author's Website: Jennifer Chiaverini

Synopsis: In the fourth novel of the beloved Elm Creek Quilts series, Sylvia Compson searches for evidence of her ancestors' courageous involvement in the Underground Railroad.

                 

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