Divided Hearts: A Civil War Friendship Quilt by Barbara Brackman

Barbara Brackman is one of my favorite quilt historians and bloggers. I love how she combines history, genealogy research, quilting and women's work, and women's history in her research.

Her newest book, Divided Hearts , arose from her free block of the month patterns on her Civil War Quilts blog. 

Inspired by friendship quilts created between 1840 and 1861, Brackman focuses on women with 'divided hearts', Northern women living in the South, and Southern women educated in the North, or with families divided by the Civil War. 

The twelve blocks represent the most popular pieced quilt designs of this time, frequently found in friendship quilts. The blocks are presented in 12" and 8" sizes. The patterns include patterns for inked signatures.

Blog followers who participated in sewing the blocks and completing the quilt are represented in the book. The variety of interpretations is broad, from reproduction fabrics reflecting those of the mid-19th c. to the use of contemporary fabrics with a modern vibe.

Brackman is a premier quilt historian who created the first collections of existent pieced and applique quilt patterns. Her knowledge on quilt history is outstanding. But she goes further with her deep research into the women who made quilts or owned quilts.

In Divided Hearts, readers learn about twelve women's lives that spanned the divide. Photographs and maps accompany the biographies. History comes alive through these women. Resources are given for those who want to 'read more'.

• Indiana Fletcher, from a Yankee family who moved to the South. Wandering Lover quilt block
• Mary Lyon and Mount Holyoke. (Emily Dickinson attended Mount Holyoke briefly.) Lend and Borrow quilt block
• Constance Fenimore Woolson, a Northern girl who attended school with Southern girls. Friendship Star quilt block.( Read my review a biography of Woolson by Anne Boyd Rioux here.)
• Sarah Powell Leeds, a Quaker teacher. Quaker Pride quilt block
• Charlotte Forten Grimke' was the daughter of a Freeman. Charlotte married Rev. Francis J. Grimke. Francis's father was brother to Angelina and Sarah Grimke, plantation born women who became Quakers and abolitionists. His mother was Nancy Weston, Henry's slave mistress. Cross and Crown quilt block. (I first read about Charlotte in Lift Up Thy Voice: The Grimke Family's Journey from Slaveholders to Civil Rights Leaders by Mark Perry.)
• The Petigru Sisters, Southern women who went to school in the North. Mary Petigru Chestnut and Sue Petigru King had a contentious relationship. Mary Chestnut's diary is quite famous. Madame's Star quilt block
• Caroline Russell Seabury, a New England educator who taught in the South. Chimney Sweep quilt block.
• Mittie Bulloch Roosevelt, Teddy's beloved mother. The Southern Bullochs summered in the North. Southern Cross quilt block.
• Mary Ann Todd Lincoln was born in Kentucky and her family were Confederates. Lexington Belle quilt block
• Elizabeth Keckley and Anna Burwell. Keckley was a servant in the Burwell household. She became Mary Todd Lincoln's dressmaker and trusted friend. Carolina Lily quilt block.(I first read about her in Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly : The Remarkable Story of the Friendship Between a First Lady and a Former Slave by Jennifer Fleischner.) 
• Emily Wharton Sinkler was the daughter of a Philadelphia lawyer who wed a Southern man. Double Star quilt block
• Emma Willard and her 'every-widening circle' is represented by the This and That quilt block.

Each block includes instructions and examples. Various settings are offered: straight setting; alternating with double nine-patch blocks; on-point with sashing and applique; on-point with pieced border; on-point as a wall hanging of five blocks. A Gallery of finished quilts completes the book.

Quilters will have fun making the quilt their own. You don't have to be a quilt maker to enjoy reading the history and biographies of these amazing women.

Read Brackman's blog post about her book at
http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2020/04/my-new-book-divided-hearts.html

I was given a free egalley by the publisher. My review is fair and unbiased.

Divided Hearts, A Civil War Friendship Quilt: Historical Narratives, 12 Blocks, Instruction & Inspirations
Barbara Brackman
Book ( $29.95 )
eBook ( $23.99 )
ISBN 9781617458880
eISBN 9781617458897

I made Brackman's previous BOM patterns for Hospital Sketches and Austen Family Album.

Hospital Sketches by Nancy A. Bekofske

Austen Family Album by Nancy A. Bekofske

Answer Creek by Ashley E. Sweeney

Ashley E. Sweeney recreates a cross-continental journey that makes social distancing and being in lock-down at home feel luxurious. Answer Creek is about endurance and survival.

Set in 1846-7 on the California-Oregon trail, the novel tells the story of Ada who travels across the continent with the Donner-Reed party.

Yes, the infamous, ill-fated, starving cannibals of history.

After the tragic death of Ada's parents, she was taken in by a Norwegian family who decide to move to California. Early in their journey, they impulsively drive their wagon into high water and are lost. Ada is next taken in by the Breen family.

Dyin's gonna get us all in the end, one way or t'other, she thinks. But dyin's not the hardest part. Livin's a lot harder than dyin' any day. ~from Answer Creek by Ashley E. Sweeney

Ada, one of the few fictional characters in the novel, has endured a lifetime of troubles over her brief nineteen years. As hardened as she is, she also has a tender heart, caring for children and women and giving medical care to the men.

The tale can rival any story of hardship I have read, from Polar explorers to concentration camps.

Staying home for two months? Running out of toilet paper, milk, and eggs?

This is nothing compared to living 124 days in an overcrowded cabin, buried in snow, starving, without heat or blankets or decent clothing.

Ada experiences the elements' extremes and the daily pain of sore feet, bug bites, sunburn, chapped skin, frozen extremities, hunger, and painful loss.

Ada survives, but what kind of life can she have, linked as she is to the cannibalism of the Donner party? Luckily, a man named Riddle takes her to Answer Creek where she can heal and find a new life.

Sometimes, it's all we can do to hold it together, she thinks. And over and through it all, we've got to forgive ourselves, and others, over and over and over again. ~from Answer Creek by Ashley E. Sweeney

I was swept into the novel by the beautiful, descriptive writing. Ada is a strong, appealing character who is easy to relate to. The novel gains momentum, from the early beauty of the plains and the impressive natural formations of the West to the privations and life-threatening brutality of mountain winter. It was a joy to read.

I received a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Answer Creek
by Ashley E. Sweeney
She Writes Press
Pub Date 19 May 2020 
ISBN: 9781631528446
paperback $16.95 (USD)

from the publisher

From the award-winning author of Eliza Waite comes a gripping tale of adventure and survival based on the true story of the ill-fated Donner Party on their 2,200-mile trek on the Oregon–California Trail from 1846 to ’47.

Nineteen-year-old Ada Weeks confronts danger and calamity along the hazard-filled journey to California. After a fateful decision that delays the overlanders more than a month, she—along with eighty-one other members of the Donner Party—finds herself stranded at Truckee Lake on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, stuck there for the entirety of a despairing, blizzard-filled winter. Forced to eat shoe leather and blankets to survive, will Ada be able to battle the elements—and her own demons—as she envisions a new life in California?

Researched with impeccable detail and filled with imagery as wide as the western prairie, Answer Creek blends history and hearsay in an unforgettable story of challenging the limits of human endurance and experiencing the triumphant power of love.

about the author

Ashley E. Sweeney is the winner of the 2017 Nancy Pearl Book Award for her debut novel, Eliza Waite. Her much anticipated second novel, Answer Creek, will be released in May 2020. 

Ashley is a seasoned journalist, teacher, and community activist. She served as a VISTA volunteer in the late 1970s and continues community service today as a member of Soroptimist International, one of the largest women’s advocacy organizations in the world. 

Early in her career, Ashley found an outlet as a humor columnist and features editor for The Lynden Tribune in Lynden, Washington, where she garnered numerous awards for her writing. She has taught English, Journalism, English as Second Language, and GED prep at both the high school and community college levels.

A native New Yorker, Ashley is a graduate of Wheaton College in Norton, Mass., the Stanford Publishing Course, and City University in Seattle, Wash., where she earned a Masters of Education degree.
Ashley spends her time between La Conner, Washington and Tucson, Arizona with her husband D. Michael Barclay.

The Poisoned Water by Candy J. Cooper

Every book I read about the Flint Water Crisis makes me sad and angry. The stories of the suffering of the citizens of Flint are horrifying. It is revolting to know that governing officials made the economic decision that lead to this suffering, then covered it up.

Candy J. Cooper saw that the excellent books already written about the crisis, including The Poisoned City by Anna Clark and What the Eyes Don't See by Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, left some stories untold. In Poisoned Water, Cooper shares the stories of the primarily African American Flint citizens who alerted authorities and politicians that there was something wrong with the water. The crisis is an example of racist policies.

General Motors plants brought a migration of workers to the city who fought for a union and fair wages. When GM closed plants, those who could left the city. With the tax base decimated, Governor Snyder sent in an Emergency Manager [EM] to balance Flint's budget, disenfranchising elected officials.

Detroit water was expensive and the EM opted to use Flint River water while the city developed a new source. They sidestepped the use of anti-corrosives and added chemicals. The river water corroded the natural buildup in the pipes that had previously kept the lead from leaching into the water. The discolored, foul smelling water caused rashes, hair loss, and illness. People complained and were lied to by authorities who insisted the water tests showed no problems.

It took years before the people were heard, the water investigated, and officials admitted there was a problem.

"Who, then, were the heroes?" Cooper asks. Yes, the media "latched" on to some important folk. But left behind the grassroots activists and mothers and citizens without who stood up to power to demand justice.

The book is promoted for Middle Grade, and perhaps some young people that age will be able to handle it. I would recommend it for older teens and adults seeking a shorter history.

I was given a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

“Poignant . . . This detailed offering, the first specifically intended for young audiences, has multiple curriculum applications.” –  Booklist, starred review 

“Thoroughly sourced and meticulously documented, this stomach-churning, blood-boiling, tear-jerking account synthesizes a city's herculean efforts to access safe, clean water. . . . This compulsively readable, must-buy narrative nonfiction serves as the ultimate antidote to civic complacence.” –  School Library Journal, starred review

Poisoned Water: How the Citizens of Flint, Michigan, Fought for Their Lives and Warned the Nation
by Candy J Cooper; Marc Aronson
Bloomsbury USA Children's Books
Pub Date May 19, 2020
ISBN 9781547602322
PRICE $18.99 (USD)

How Beautiful We Were by Mbolo Mbue

One angry woman did everything, and she failed.~from How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue

I read Imbolo Mbue's first novel Behold the Dreamers as a galley and for book club. I jumped at the chance to read her second novel, How Beautiful We Were. 

Was money so important that they would sell children to strangers seeking oil?~from How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue

The novel is about an African village struggling for environmental justice, powerless, caught between an American oil company and a corrupt dictatorship government. 

They are a proud people, connected to the land of their ancestors. They have lived simple, subsistence lives, full of blessings. Until the oil company ruined their water, their land, their air. A generation of children watch their peers dying from poisoned water. Their pleas for help are in vain. 

School-aged Thula is inspired by books, including The Communist Manifesto, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and The Wretched of the Earth. "They were her closest friends," spurring her into activist causes when she goes to America to study. In America and becomes an activist. Meanwhile, her peers in her home village lose faith in the process and take up terrorism. 

How could we have been so reckless as to dream?~from How Beautiful We Were by Mbolo Mbue

The fictional village, its inhabitants and history, is so well drawn I could believe it taken from life. The viewpoint shifts among the characters.

We wondered if America was populated with cheerful people like that overseer, which made it hard for us to understand them: How could they be happy when we were dying for their sake?~from How Beautiful We Were by Mbolo Mbue

The fate of the village and its country are an indictment to Western colonialism and capitalism. Slaves, rubber, oil--people came and exploited Africa for gain. The village loses their traditions and ancestral place as their children become educated and take jobs with Western corporations and the government.

This story must be told, it might not feel good to all ears, it gives our mouths no joy to sat it, but our story cannot be left untold.~from How Beautiful We Were by Mbolo Mbue

This is not an easy book for an American to read. It reminds us of the many ways our country has failed and continues to fail short of the ideal we hope it is. And not just abroad--we have failed our to protect our children here in America.

I was given access to a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

from the publisher:

We should have known the end was near. So begins Imbolo Mbue’s powerful second novel, How Beautiful We Were. Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, it tells of a people living in fear amid environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company. Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of cleanup and financial reparations to the villagers are made—and ignored. The country’s government, led by a brazen dictator, exists to serve its own interests. Left with few choices, the people of Kosawa decide to fight back. Their struggle will last for decades and come at a steep price.

Told from the perspective of a generation of children and the family of a girl named Thula who grows up to become a revolutionary, How Beautiful We Were is a masterful exploration of what happens when the reckless drive for profit, coupled with the ghost of colonialism, comes up against one community’s determination to hold on to its ancestral land and a young woman’s willingness to sacrifice everything for the sake of her people’s freedom.

How Beautiful We Were
by Imbolo Mbue
Random House Publishing Group - Random House
Pub Date: March 9, 2021
ISBN: 9780593132425
hard cover $28.00 (USD)

Death in Mud Lick by Eric Eyre

Newspaper journalists were my heroes as a girl. My ten-year-old girlfriend and I spent hours planning to turn a falling down chicken coup into an office where we would write and publish our own newspaper. I was on the school newspaper in high school. I follow a number of journalists on social media who are my heroes, and now I have one more to add to my list.

You reminded me of how much a community depends on its newspaper to tell the truth and follow through finding the truth even if it's a little scary.~from Death in Mud Lick by Eric Eyre

Charleston Gazette-Mail reporter Eric Eyre won a Pulitzer Prize for his investigation into the massive opioid shipments to West Virginia. That story is presented in the book Death in Mud Lick.

I will admit this was one of those books I requested that looked interesting but when I received it I almost regretted it. I don't need to read another tragedy. We are in a pandemic already!

But I don't shirk my responsibilities and I sat down and read. I was soon immersed in the twisted history of how every safeguard failed to alert and stop the massive inflow of opioids into small towns, resulting in record overdose deaths. I looked forward to picking it up every day.

Everybody was making money--the pharmacies, doctors, patients, distributors, manufacturers. And nobody had the power to stop them.~ from Death in Mud Lick by Eric Eyre

This is one more story about people's lives sacrificed for money and governing authorities complicity in cover-ups. It is also the story of how a small town newspaper and one reporter prevailed to disclose the papertrail detailing responsibility.

Eyre does an amazing job marrying the personal side of the crisis and the struggle of the newspaper to keep afloat with his documentation of events. During the time of his investigation, Eyre was diagnosed with Parkinson's. It didn't stop him.

Today a Facebook friend shared a quip about shutting down the national media and watching 80% of the world's problems go away. Another Facebook friend responded, "It's your right to stay ignorant."

I am with that second friend. The media--particularly newspapers  still employing investigative reporters--are essential to a democratic society. We may not like what we are reading, we may find the news disheartening and frightening, but our alternative is ignorance.

I received a free ebook from the publisher on a Goodreads giveaway. My review is fair and unbiased.

Read an excerpt and listen to an audio excerpt at
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Death-in-Mud-Lick/Eric-Eyre/9781982105334

Death in Mud Lick: A Coal Country Fight against the Drug Companies That Delivered the Opioid Epidemic
By Eric Eyre
Scribner
Publication March 31, 2020
$18 hard cover; $12.99 ebook
ISBN 13: 9781982105310

from the publisher:

From a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter from the smallest newspaper ever to win the prize for investigative reporting, an urgent, riveting, and heartbreaking investigation into the corporate and governmental greed that pumped millions of pain pills into small Appalachian towns, decimating communities. 

Death in Mud Lick is the story of a pharmacy in Kermit, West Virginia, that distributed 12 million opioid pain pills in three years to a town with a population of 382 people—and of one woman, desperate for justice, after losing her brother to overdose. Debbie Preece’s fight for accountability for her brother’s death took her well beyond the Sav-Rite Pharmacy in coal country, ultimately leading to three of the biggest drug wholesalers in the country. She was joined by a crusading lawyer and by local journalist, Eric Eyre, who uncovered a massive opioid pill-dumping scandal that shook the foundation of America’s largest drug companies—and won him a Pulitzer Prize.

Part Erin Brockovich, part Spotlight, Death in Mud Lick details the clandestine meetings with whistleblowers; a court fight to unseal filings that the drug distributors tried to keep hidden, a push to secure the DEA pill-shipment data, and the fallout after Eyre’s local paper, the Gazette-Mail, the smallest newspaper ever to win a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting, broke the story.
Eyre follows the opioid shipments into individual counties, pharmacies, and homes in West Virginia and explains how thousands of Appalachians got hooked on prescription drugs—resulting in the highest overdose rates in the country. But despite the tragedy, there is also hope as citizens banded together to create positive change—and won. A work of deep reporting and personal conviction, Eric Eyre’s intimate portrayal of a national public health crisis illuminates the shocking pattern of corporate greed and its repercussions for the citizens of West Virginia—and the nation—to this day. 

Covid-19 Life, TBR, WIP

The Cleveland Pear tree

Some Spring.

This May has brought snow to Michigan--one of the top four snowiest Michigan Mays ever so far!

The Cleveland Pear tree bloomed and the apple tree is ready to bloom.

the apple tree

Wild violets under the apple trees

The first baby robins are flying. One sat on our patio in the morning...

And a bunny came to visit in the evening.

I finished the Alice in Wonderland Redwork quilt top.

And I finished the embroidered 'Gus' blocks.

I have finished reading 64 books this year. Yikes! And my TBR shelf is not getting any smaller!

Reading Now:

• The Splendid and the Vile by Eric Larson, a Goodreads win
• Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan by Deborah Reed
• The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing by Joseph Fasano, a novel by a poet I discovered on Twitter

Books in the mail:
Jo & Laurie from Bookish, based on the characters from Little Women
Ten Things Every Child With Autism Wishes You Would Know by Ellen Notbohm, author of The River by Starlight

New E-galleys:

• Divided Hearts by Barbara Brackman, based on her block of the month series
• Sensational Quilts for Scrap Lovers
• Pride and Prejudice from Jane Austen Children's Stories
• Underwater: How Our American Dream of Homeownership Became a Nightmare by Ryan Dezember
• JFK by Fredrik Logevall, a new biography
• Shelter in Place by David Leavitt. I read his first novel The Lost Language of Cranes in 1991.
• The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue, author of The Wonder

Our grandpuppy Sunny continues to learn new tricks, and our son and his girl keep me updated. She jumps through hoops (and on the table) and had a bell to ring when she needs to go outside. But she rings that bell when she wants to go out and play, too!

Sunny loves to watch

She has grown so much since we last saw her in early March!


I have been enjoying the Detroit Symphony Orchestra's Watch Parties, streaming past concerts with commentary from viewers. And the DSO musicians sharing music 'from their porch'. Also, Sir Patrick Stewart's daily reading of Shakespeare's sonnets, Yo Yo Ma's cello pieces, Joseph Fasano's daily poetry reading, The Show Must Go On YouTube airings of Sir Anthony Lloyd Webber shows...I keep very busy!

My brother social isolates on nature walks. Last week, an osprey flew in front of his Ram truck. Below is an osprey he saw on his walk at Stony Creek Metro Park.

 He came across deer.

 And was able to bring his pontoon to his dock.

Cass Lake, MI

I hope you are keeping safe and busy, too.

The King of Confidence by Miles Harvey

When we lived along Lake Michigan people would ask me if I knew about the King of Beaver Island. I had never heard of him. All I knew was that quilter Gwen Marston lived on Beaver Island. I had seen photos of her home and studio and the classes she held there. A lovely place.

Then along comes Miles Harvey's The King of Confidence: A Tale of Utopian Dreamers, Frontier Schemers, True Believers, False Prophets, and the Murder of an American Monarch, finally my chance to learn about this Michigan king.

I'll cut to the chase: Harvey's book is rollicking, page-turning, riotous good fun...and a sobering reminder of the American penchant to be taken in by quacks, con-men, and self-aggrandizing wannabes.

As a boy, J. J. Strang dreamed of the big achievements awaiting him--like marrying the girl Victoria who was destined to become queen of England. He wanted to be king.

Over his lifetime, Strang reinvented himself, from teacher to lawyer, from atheist to the heir to Mormon founder Joseph Smith, from self-proclaimed king to pirate to legislator. And from husband to one wife to husband to a harem.

Harvey could have given us a somber, and perhaps tedious, exploration of Strang's place in American history, with insights into our current political craziness as well as Strang's antebellum  social, economic, and political craziness.

OK; he did cover these themes. But with pizazz and ironic fun to create an entertaining narrative that makes one want to keep reading.

Chapters have lively titles and chapter quotations. Such as,"In which one charlatan is run out of town, only to be replaced by an even greater scoundrel", the following quote being a discussion between the Duke and the King from Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 

Yes, this is a book that Michiganders must read, but also those interested in how Americans gravitate to extremes during troubled times. Harvey's insights into human nature and society transcends time and place.

I was given a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

from the publisher:In the summer of 1843, James Strang, a charismatic young lawyer and avowed atheist, vanished from a rural town in New York. Months later he reappeared on the Midwestern frontier and converted to a burgeoning religious movement known as Mormonism. In the wake of the murder of the sect's leader, Joseph Smith, Strang unveiled a letter purportedly from the prophet naming him successor, and persuaded hundreds of fellow converts to follow him to an island in Lake Michigan, where he declared himself a divine king. 

From this stronghold he controlled a fourth of the state of Michigan, establishing a pirate colony where he practiced plural marriage and perpetrated thefts, corruption, and frauds of all kinds. Eventually, having run afoul of powerful enemies, including the American president, Strang was assassinated, an event that was frontpage news across the country.

The King of Confidence tells this fascinating but largely forgotten story. Centering his narrative on this charlatan's turbulent twelve years in power, Miles Harvey gets to the root of a timeless American original: the Confidence Man. Full of adventure, bad behavior, and insight into a crucial period of antebellum history, The King of Confidence brings us a compulsively readable account of one of the country's boldest con men and the boisterous era that allowed him to thrive.

The King of Confidence: A Tale of Utopian Dreamers, Frontier Schemers, True Believers, False Prophets, and the Murder of an American Monarch
by Miles Harvey
Little, Brown and Company
Publication: May 12, 2020 
PRICE: $29.00 (USD)
ISBN: 9780316463591