Böcker av Cherie Dargan

Sarah, a widowed schoolteacher, rushes to be with her sister, Emily, about to give birth. It's September 1864, and the war has come to Winchester, Virginia yet again. Sadly, Emily and her baby die, leaving Sarah to take Emily's maid Rebecca and son Bobby to freedom. Her mother insists she take along a young slave named Thomas for protection. It's almost one hundred miles to Baltimore, where they can take a boat to Boston, and then board a train west. Can Sarah lead this group to safety, avoiding stray Confederates, Union soldiers, and slave catchers? And why does Rebecca say to look for quilt squares on their journey?In present day, Gracie and her boyfriend, David, visit Grandma Molly over the Christmas holidays. Forty years ago, Molly helped her sisters-in-law clean out a house after their Grandma Mary's death. Molly found a red and green quilt that no one else wanted, so she brought it home. An old legal envelope was safety-pinned to the quilt, which had a faded bloodstain on the back. A great aunt warned her to burn the envelope and quilt, and after a family gathering, the envelope disappeared. Molly hid the quilt away. Now she wants Gracie to find out if the quilt dates to the Civil War and who made it? However, Grandpa Patrick walks in and makes a fuss. "Ah, Molly, what are you doing with this old quilt again? Can't you let it go after all this time?" Gracie wonders, what's going on with my grandparents?Can Gracie find the story behind the red and green quilt and help her grandparents resolve their problems the way she did with the California quilt?

The year is 2012. Gracie works at the county museum in Jubilee Junction, Iowa, where she is hard at work putting together an exhibit of historic quilts. She stuggles with an overbearing boyfriend who is pressuring her to leave her hometown and get a job near him in the big city, juggling three jobs to make ends meet, and trying to serve as peacemaker between her two elderly aunts who can't seem to stay in the same room together without fireworks going off between them.This dual timeline timeline adventure begins during a family reunion of sorts, when Gracie inherits a box of cassette tapes, a quilt, and the key to a family secret from from her Grandmother Grace. Gracie and her Aunt Violet listen to the tapes together and are transported back to the early 1940s, to the onset of World War 2, as the elder Grace narrates the tale of how she and her twin sisters, Violet and Vera, traveled from their ancestral home in Iowa to California to help with the war effort. When Vera hears that Gracie has inherited the "California Quilt," she will not rest until that relic from the past is destroyed.