The Quilter's Apprentice

In Jennifer Chiaverini's The Quilter's Apprentice, the first installment in the Elm Creek Quilts Woman's Fiction series, this heart-warming tale would intertwine stitches of historical fiction/romance into this tale of love, loss, life, and friendship. For Sarah McClure, she and her husband had moved to Waterford, Pennsylvania for a new job prospect for her husband. While Sarah searched for a new accounting job and had no luck with interviews, she had made a friend for Mrs. Sylvia Compson, an elderly widow who needed help sorting out her late sister's belongings inside of her manor home before the sale. While she landed a temporary job helping Sylvia, she learned a lot about her life during World War II as a young girl, along with some tales on how to make a variety of quilts. From time to time, she made new friends with the Tangled Web Quilters and discovered a great deal about how to piece quilts. In a race of time to prevent Sylvia to stay and not to sell her home, she came through on her promise to keep it alive and to find out what she was missing along. She had found an ideal job right there with Sylvia, too.

This was a wonderful and lovely woman's fiction novel. I cared about Sarah and Matt and also about Sylvia's plight about being a young war widow and how she befriended Sarah in her home. I also loved learning to hear a great idea about Sylvia's life and hope Sarah could make amends with her own mother. The locations for Waterford was beautiful and lovely in the scenic settings from Sylvia's home to the Tangled Web Guild. In great detail, we learned a lot about how quilts are made and the variety of designs. This was a fantastic read and really enjoyable from start to finish to give you a feeling of faith and hope and warmth. No wonder my late mother loved this series right before she died. This would make you cheer for Sylvia and Sarah's quilting designs in this novel with a hint of romance, drama, intrigue, suspense and mystery.