Quilter's Apprentice

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"A heartwarming story of relationships that, like pieces of a quilt, can be connected with discord or with harmony."-Sandra Dallas, author of The Persian Pickle Club

After moving with her husband, Matt, to the small college town of Waterford, Pennsylvania, Sarah McClure struggles to find a fulfilling job. In the meantime, she agrees to help seventy-five-year-old Sylvia Compson prepare her family estate, Elm Creek Manor, for sale. As part of her compensation, Sarah is taught how to quilt by this cantankerous elderly woman, who is a master of the craft.

During their lessons, Mrs. Compson reveals how her family was torn apart by tragedy, jealousy, and betrayal, and her stories force Sarah to face uncomfortable truths about her own alienation from her widowed mother. As their friendship deepens, Mrs. Compson confides in Sarah the truth about why she wants to sell Elm Creek Manor. In turn, Sarah seeks a way to bring life and joy back to the estate so Mrs. Compson can keep her home-and Sarah can keep her cherished friend. The Quilter's Apprentice teaches deep lessons about family, friendship, and sisterhood, and about creating a life as you would a quilt: with time, love, and patience, piecing the miscellaneous and mismatched scraps into a beautiful whole.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Quilting is the overall motif of this leisurely paced, predictable first novel, set in a small Pennsylvania college town. Young Sarah McClure, an accountant tired of number-crunching, has accompanied her landscaper husband to the area, but she soon finds that jobs are few and uninteresting. Discouraged, she agrees to do housework on a temporary basis at Elm Creek Manor, a mansion on the edge of town. The manor's occupant, Sylvia Compson, an embittered master quilter and widow in her 70s, has returned to the family home following the death of her sister to ready it for sale. Sylvia's story, told with increasingly long flashbacks and confidences during the private quilting lessons she agrees to give Sarah, reveal a tormented family history of wealth and privilege ruined by tragedy. Sarah's sympathy for Sylvia is juxtaposed against the innuendoes she hears at meetings of the Tangled Web Quilters, a group of local women who mistrust Sylvia. Meant to be a sympathetic catalyst, Sarah comes across as whiny instead of plucky, and the book is burdened by far too many descriptions of her job interviews and subsequent insecurities. Chiaverini is at her best when describing the manor and its once grand history, but her prose is merely serviceable and the dialogue is stilted. Sure to be compared to Whitney Otto's How to Make an American Quilt, this novel fails to connect on an emotional level.

Library Journal - Ellen R. Cohen, Rockville, MD

Sarah McClure and her husband, Matt, have just moved to Waterford, PA. While Matt finds work with a landscape company, Sarah, an accountant, wants to try something new. With no leads and no offers, she is depressed and frustrated. When elderly Sylvia Compson asks Sarah to help prepare her family estate for sale, Sarah finds new friends, and Sylvia, a master craftswoman, agrees to teach Sarah how to quilt. Sarah's new relationship inspires an exchange of confidences; she learns about Sylvia's "family skeletons" while facing her own difficult relationship with her mother. Patiently piecing scraps of material, the quilters explore both women's lives, stitching details and solutions together slowly but with courage and strength. Chiaverini, a quilter herself, has pieced together a beautiful story in this first novel. Sarah and Matt are a charming couple who prove that problems really do have solutions. Women — daughters, sisters, and mothers — will enjoy it. Recommended.

Kathryn Smith - Anderson Independent Mail

Glows with the love of quilts, the importance of family and the value of friends to share our joys and sorrows with.

Kirkus Reviews

A debut tale of two women, one young, one old, who learn to craft new lives and mend old ones as they sew a quilt. Sarah McClure gives up her accounting job when her husband Matt, long laid off, is offered a landscape design position in Waterford, Pennsylvania. Once moved in, Sarah begins her job search, but with little success. Since time lies heavy on her hands, she accompanies Matt when he calls on his client, Mrs. Compson, an elderly widow who lives at Elm Creek Manor, a run-down estate. Mrs. Compson wants to restore the estate she has recently inherited from her estranged sister, Claudia, so that she can sell it. Curtly, she offers Sarah a job sweeping and clearing the house. Though a bit insulted, Sarah decides to accept the offer when she learns that a prizewinning quilt hanging in the window of a local shop was made by Mrs. Compson. She'll work-if Mrs. Compson will also teach her how to quilt. And so it goes. While she labors over various quilt blocks, from Log Cabin to the Sawtooth Star, the two women become friends, reminiscing about the past. Elm Creek, as Sarah learns, was once a famous horse-breeding establishment, but after Mrs. Compson's husband James and brother Richard were killed in WWI, it went downhill. Her father died, she gave birth to a premature baby, and when she discovered that her sister's Claudia's husband could have saved Richard and James (they were in the same unit), she quarreled with Claudia and left Elm Creek. Now, with the estate restored, Sarah cooks up a plan that will preserve it from developers, give Mrs. Compson a new life, and herself-at last-a real job. Nicely stitched together (and fun for quilters), but more slick trick than vibrant novel. ..

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

The Quilter's Apprentice is a novel that is sure to cause some buzz in the quilting bees. Quilting propels the plot and colors the background of this first novel by Jennifer Chiaverini. It is obvious that the author practices and loves quilting herself, as her many references to the art and social context of quilting are accurate and realistic. Best of all, the conclusion ties all of the story's threads together as only a quilter could.  — Judy Martin

I enjoyed every word of Jennifer Chiaverini's story about friendship and forgiveness. She very accurately portrays the spirit and sense of humor of today's quilters. If The Quilter's Apprentice were a true story, I would love to be a part of Sarah and Sylvia's brilliant project.  — Marianne Fons

Jennifer Chiaverini's first novel is a heartwarming story of relationships that, like pieces of a quilt, can be connected with discord or with harmony. You'll discover friendship here, and you'll learn a thing or two about quilting, too.  — Sandra Dallas

With quiet intelligence and dry wit, Jennifer Chiaverini explores the delicate relationships between women — mothers, daughters, sisters, and friends. The world she creates in The Quilter's Apprentice is rich with the textured, complicated lives of memorable characters engaged in the hard business of ordinary life. Chiaverini tells an involving story of strong women who sustain and nourish each other, and of the young woman who comes to find her own strength and identity, both within this affirming circle and outside it.  — Charlotte Holmes

I enjoyed the way Chiaverini deftly stitched the lives of these two women together. That she chose patchwork and quilting to help tell the story was a special bonus. Tell Sarah and Sylvia I'd quilt with them any day!  — Ami Simms

Sandra Dallas, author of The Persian Pickle Club
Heartwarming. You'll discover friendship here, and you'll learn a thing or two about quilting.
 — Sandra Dallas