This is the first Chiaverini novel I have read, and I am pleased to make the acquaintance of her Quilter's Series. She is obviously an accomplished quilter and a quilt historian in her own right, and she very effectively sews together solid tales by using bits and pieces of historical fact and quilting lore to start off her works.
In this particular book Chiaverini uses historial tidbits from the Historic Charleston Foundation and the Edisto Island Museum to create a story around a slave woman who is sold south to South Carolina after being caught as a runaway along the Underground Railway in Pennsylvania in 1859. She fashions a Birds in the Air quilt out of scraps from her owners' castoff clothes and her own rags and hides in the stitching hints as to how to find the Elm Creek Farm again the next time she runs. She leaves a son, her offspring with her master, in the care of the Elm Creek Farm owners.
Before she is able to return she is sold by her master in Virginia to his relatives on Edisto Island near Charleston, SC and eventually is allowed to marry and have a baby daughter. The Civil War stops any plans that she and her spouse, Titus Chester, can make to run north, but does not slake the desire or the secret planning that goes on to regain freedom.
The book is well researched and manages to hold interest both for the historic details and the dramatic storyline. This is an effective way to personalize and humanize the atrocities of slavery so that we never forget what happened to those who were enslaved.
Liz Nichols
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