Handicrafts are great. Sadly they are becoming lost arts and people move to things like digital design. But I am one of the people keeping them alive by practicing them. Another way that they are being kept alive is by the serge of popular novels that center around knitting clubs and quilters. We've all spotted them in book stores and at libraries and I've been reading a few that have been catching my eye. Most of them are light and fluffy, like Harlequin but if you trade sex for needlework. And normally the plot lines are a little less generic and predictable.
But one handicraft novel that I have particularly enjoyed is The Union Quilters by Jennifer Chaverini. It takes a few things that I love, multi perspective books, historical fiction, strong independent female characters, and quilting and put them into one handy dandy novel. The Union Quilters switches its narrator between a few women in a quilting club and their spouses and lovers. It is just at the beginning of the civil war and many of the men are enlisting. And to help their troops, the women make quilts to donate and also sell them for profit and then use the money to buy supplies for the soldiers. Something pretty new in those days.
The Union Quilters also isn't all happiness and cool patterns. Not all of the women that we grow to love through the course of the book have a happy ending. There is racism, unrequited love, hate, and pain. Just like the real world. Yes there are some cliches but then again there are lots of cliches out there. It seems like my life is full of them.
After I finished The Union Quilters I discovered that it was part of a series. So I am going to read all of them, because it was so enjoyable.
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