The Hidden Thread by Liz Trenow: Historical Fiction About 18th c Hugenout Silk Weavers

I am excited to be part of The Hidden Thread Blog Tour!

Liz Trenow's The Hidden Thread is a historical fiction/romance novel about the silk weaving trade in 18th c London, inspired by Trenow's family history as silk weavers in Spitalfields, East London.

While researching her family history Trenow learned about Anna Maria Garthwaite, a silk designer who produced naturalistic, accurate designs of flowers for brocades and damasks which appear in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The novel centers around a vicar's daughter, Anna, who comes to live with her aunt and uncle in London. Anna is a very modern woman in her sensibility while conforming to the expectations of her time and class.

Anna's uncle is a prosperous, well-connected, silk mercer. It is hoped that Anna's prospects will be much better in London than in her small village. It is not only for her own sake that Anna must marry well; as pastor of a small church her aging father lives in a parsonage; he can never retire, as it means he would lose both home and income.

Life in upper crust London is bewildering and constricting for Anna. Like Belle in Beauty and the Beast, she both longs for more than her village offers but also rejects the city's societal values that constrict women's lives. She would like to marry for love but when a man with prospects shows interest in her, she knows that regardless of her personal feelings she should accept him.

Ideally, Anna would like to be an artist. London brings her into connection with several of the great artists of her time, including one who takes an interest in her work.

Upon arrival in London, Anna met an apprentice silk weaver, Henri, a French Protestant refugee who fled to England rather than convert to Catholicism. The Huguenots brought their skill in silk weaving, but like refugees across time, they are reviled.

Anna and Henri feel an attraction they both understand is 'impossible'. Henri learns of Anna's artistic skill and begs her to provide him with a design for the masterpiece he must weave for acceptance as a master weaver. Through their relationship, the reader learns about the design history, mechanics, and politics of silk weaving in the 18th c.

The importation of French silk was banned at this time but was in such demand that mercers pirated it into England--including Anna's cousin, putting his father's reputation at risk.

Meanwhile, the silk weavers are asking for fair wages and violence is erupting.

The novel will appeal to readers who enjoy a progressive heroine and a wish-fulfillment ending served with a slice of history.

I read Trenow's previous novel The Forgotten Seamstress, in which a woman seeks the history of a mysterious quilt. Read my review here.

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

Liz Trenow is a former BBC and newspaper journalist, now working freelance. She is also the author of The Last Telegram. Learn more about the author and silk weaving at  Website | Twitter | Facebook

From the publisher:

Liz Trenow's family have been silk weavers for nearly three hundred years, and the company is one of only three still operating in the UK today, weaving for top-end fashion houses and royal commissions.

It is this remarkable silk heritage that has inspired many of Liz's four novels, including the most recent The Silk Weaver (UK pub Jan 2017) It will be published in the US as The Hidden Thread in May 2017.

The Hidden Thread

Liz Trenow
Sourcebooks
$15.99 trade paperback
ISBN:9781492637516

Enter the Rafflecopter Giveaway for The Hidden Thread here.

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The Forgotten Seamstress by Liz Trent, A Mystery About A Quilt With An Unusual Provenance.

Liz Trent's novel pivots on an inherited quilt made with a special fabric, the May Silks created expressly for Princess 'May' (Mary) of Teck's wedding gown for her marriage to The Duke of York, George the son of Queen Victoria, in 1893.

"You can see the rose, the thistle, and chain of shamrocks--symbols for the nations of the United Kingdom...These flowers in the center look like daffodils...but more important, can you see those silver threads?" 

Caroline's life is in disorder. She split with her long time boyfriend then lost her lucrative, if dull, job. She has discovered she is pregnant, and her mother has dementia and must be moved into senior care, and the family cottage sold.

Caroline's mother has given her an old quilt. Upon examination by her friend it appears to incorporate fabrics made exclusively for the royal family. Having nothing better to do (start a new business, undergo a miscarriage, and fall for a new guy) Caroline goes on a quest to discover the mystery behind the quilt, who made it, and why her Granny Jean wanted her mother to be sure to hand it down to her.

Plot-driven novels and mysteries are not my usual purview; but there is a time for for them, and being down with a bad case of the stomach flu this past week, The Forgotten Seamstress was perfect.

The novel is written in three time periods; the back story of the quiltmaker Maria Romano, who in 1910 is brought from an orphanage to work as a seamstress in the royal household; transcriptions of interviews with Maria in 1970 when she was in a hospital for the insane; and the contemporary story of Caroline who inherits the quilt. Maria is the more successful and interesting character, the tape transcriptions beautifully rendered.

Through Maria's character we take a tour of  the treatment of the mentally ill over thirty years. When when the quilt goes missing Caroline has to confront the plight of the homeless and life on the street.

As typical of a mystery, the unraveling is complicated and and has a surprise ending.

"As I lifted the quilt out and unfolded it right side out...light from the window illuminated its beautiful, shimmering patterns and dazzling colors."

Now...the quilt.

The mystery quilt is a Medallion style, central square on point, with the center square embroidered with a Lover's Knot, and bordered with lozenges pieced from silks. The next border includes appliquéd figures that become an important clue to the validity of Maria's story. There are hand woven velvets a century old. As the borders move outwards, the fabrics change to lilac and gray cottons, including WWI era uniform fabrics, in a zig zag pattern. The last border of Grandmother's Fans, dating to the 1970s, includes Liberty Cottons.

The quilt was layered with a sheet for the backing and a thin wool blanket as batting, or wadding as it is called in the novel. The quilting stitches followed the seams.

A pattern to replicate the (fictional) quilt has been developed by Judy Baker-Rogers and can be found here.

Liz Trent grew up living next to and working at the family silk mill in Britain.

I thank the publisher and NetGalley for access to the e-book for my review.

The Forgotten Seamstress
Sourcebooks Landmark
ISBN: 9781402282485

My 2017 Year End Review of Reading

Oh dear. I read 160 books last year and I had been determined to read FEWER books.  But here I am, having read 176 books! I read so many amazing books this year.

Most of the books I read were e-galleys and ARCs (Advanced Reading Copies) courtesy of NetGalley, Edelweiss, Blogging for Books, First to Read, IndieBrag, and Bookish First. These books were ones I requested.

Some were giveaway wins from the publisher on social media or on Goodreads or LibraryThing, and some were giveaways from fellow bloggers. I entered the contest for these books.

Other books were sent me directly from the publisher. These books are often ones I had not even known about. Sometimes I am approached through email and I accept to read it, and sometimes a publisher ships me an ARC directly.

The rest were book club choices and even--yes!--personal choices from my TBR lists, books I borrowed from the local library or purchased.

My 2017 goals included a focus on reading new authors and emerging voices and multicultural books on human rights issues, including racism, immigration, economic class, and LGBT issues.

My life long interest in biographies of women and writers, Polar and Space exploration, and the earth sciences make appearances in my choices, as does my more recent interest in politics and my long term interest in American and British history. I also like to read Michigan and Detroit related books, and Philadelphia settings since we lived there, too.

Sometimes I need to read something completely different and I turn to Science Fiction, mysteries, and Woman's Fiction. And of course, my true love of Literary Fiction and the classics is always evident in my reading.

My favorite books are italicized, which was a hard decision to make since there are so many I truly enjoyed. My decision is 100% personal and not reflective of the quality, importance, or my enjoyment of the other books.

Books which were published this year that I read in 2016 as e-galleys and ARCs are included on my list with an asterisk [*]. My book club selections are marked with an + and books from my personal TBR are marked #.

Stories of Young People Growing Up
The Barrowfields* by Phillip Lewis
The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
Everything I Never Told You# by Celeste Ng
Daphne by Will Boast [coming out in 2018]
The Futures* by Anna Pitnoiak
The Animators* by Kayla Rae Whitaker
Self-Portrait with Boy by Rachel Lyon [coming out in 2018]
The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin [coming out in 2018]
Another Brooklyn# by Jaqueline Woodson
The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon
And Then She Was Born by Cristiano Gentilli

Literary Fiction
We Shall Not All Sleep by Estep Nagy
Future Home of the Living God by Louise Edrich
Some Rise by Sin by Philip Caputo
Abide with Me# by Elizabeth Strout
Idaho* by Emily Ruskovich
Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk* by Kathleen Rooney
Spaceman of Bohemia* by Jaroslav Kalfar

Books to Restore Your Faith in Humanity
The Story of Arthur Truluv by Elizabeth Berg
Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout
Allie and Bea by Catherine Ryan Hyde
To the Stars Through Difficulties by Romalyn Tilghman
The Reminders* by Val Emmich

Classics
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn+ by Betty Smith
Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell
The Remains of the Day+ by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Age of Innocence+ by Edith Wharton

Hot-Button Social Topics
This Is How It Begins by Joan Dempsey
I Can't Breathe by Matt Taibbi
Reading with Patrick by Michelle Kuo
Just Mercy by Brian Stevenson
Quiet Until the Thaw by Alexandra Fuller
Who's Jim Hines?# by Jean Alicia Elster
Convicted: A Crooked Cop, an Innocent Man, and an Unlikely Journey of Forgiveness and Friendship by Jameel Zookie McGee
Wild Mountain by Nancy Kilgore

Immigration and Refugees
The End We Start From by Megan Hunter
Exit West# by Moshin Hamid
The Faraway Brothers by Lauren Markham
The Leavers# by Lisa Ko
Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran
The Boat People [Coming out in 2018] by Sharon Bala
In the Midst of Winter by Isabelle Allende

Resistance Reading
Radical Hope: Letters of Love and Dissent in Dangerous Times by Carolina De Robertis
Utopia for Realists: The Case for a Universal Basic Income, Open Borders, and a 15-hour Workweek
by Rutger Bregman
What We Do Now: Standing Up For Your Values in Trump's America by Dennis Johnson
The Locals by Jonathan Dee

How We Got To Here
Behemoth: A History of the Factory and The Making of the Modern World by Joshua B. Freeman [coming out in 2018]
Superfandom: How Our Obsessions are Changing What We Buy and Who We Are by Zoe Fraade-Blanar

Short Stories
To Lay to Rest Our Ghosts+ by Cailtin Hamilton Summie
The Dinner Party by Joshua Ferris
State of Fear [Coming out in 2018] by Neel Mukherjee
Things we Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enriquez
The Refugees* by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Upstream# by Mary Oliver

Essays
Winter by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Serious Books That Also Made Me Laugh
The Windfall by Diksha Basu
Tell Me How This Ends Well by David Samuel Levinson
(The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne can fall into this category, too)

Feminist Novel/Fantasy About Romancing a Frogman
Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls

Women Who Fought Back
Gather the Daughters by Jennie Melamed
The Last Ballad by Wiley Cash
The Other Einstein+ by Marie Benedict
My Live, My Love, My Legacy by Coretta Scott King
Madame President: The Extraordinary Journey of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf by Helene Cooper
The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher
His Eye is on the Sparrow# by Ethel Waters
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank+
The Velveteen Daughter by Laurel Huber Davis
Gilded Suffragists: The New York Socialites Who Fought for Women's Right to Vote by Joanna
Neuman
Hidden Figures+ by Margot Lee Shetterly
Victoria and Abdul by Schrani Basu

Flawed Masterpiece
The Resurrection of Joan Ashby by Cherise Wolas

Historical Fiction with a Mystery
The Prague Sonata by Bradford Morrow
The Winter Station [Coming out in 2018] by Jody Shields

Fantasy & Magic
The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman
Practical Magic# by Alice Hoffman
The Bear and the Nightingale# and The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden
Grief Cottage by Gail Goodwin

Re-Tellings
Hook's Tale: Being the Account of an Unjustly Villainized Pirate Written by Himself, by John
Pielmeier
Mr Rochester by Sarah Shoemaker
New Boy by Tracey Chevalier
Nick and Jake by Jonathan Richards
Pepys in Love: Elizabeth's Story by Patrick Delaforce
House of Names by Colm Tobin

Science Fiction
Something Wicked This Way Comes# by Ray Bradbury
Dandelion Wine+ by Ray Bradbury
Central Station by Lavie Tidhar
The Salt Line by Holly Goddard Jones
The Space Between the Stars by Anne Corlett

Biographies and Memoirs
Mozart's Starling by Lynda Lynn Haupt
A $500 House in Detroit: Rebuilding an Abandoned Home and an American City by Drew Philp
Dimestore: A Writer's Life# by Lee Smith
Promise Me, Dad by Joe Biden
Theft by Finding by David Sedaris
Leading Tones by Leonard Slatkin
The Last Bar in NYC by Brian Michaels
It Takes a School by Jonathan Starr
Mao's Last Dancer+ by Li Cunxin
The Book of Joe by Jeff Wilser
The Fearless Benjamin Lay by Marcus Rediker
The Great Nadar by Adam Begley
Renegade: Martin Luther, the Graphic Biography by Andrea Grosso Ciponte

Non-Fiction
Storybook Style: America's Whimsical Homes of the Twenties by Arrol  Gellner

Books About Exploration
Endurance by Scott Kelly
Ask an Astronaut by Tim Peake
Apollo 8 by Jeffrey Kluger
Ice Ghosts: The Epic Hunt for the Lost Franklin Expedition by Paul Watson

Our Earth
The Life and Death of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan
The Great Quake by Henry Fountain
Quakeland by Kathryn Miles
Golden Bats and Pink Pigeons by Gerald Durrell

Politics and American History
The Gatekeepers by Chris Whipple
Building the Great Society by Joshua Zeitz
The Accidental President by A. J. Baime
Detroit 1967 by Joel Stone
The Tunnels: Escapes Under the Berlin Wall-and the Historic Films the JFK White House Tried to Kill* by Greg Mitchell
High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic* by Glenn Frankel

Exposés
White Wash by Cary Gillam
American Wolf by Nate Blakeslee

Historical Fiction
River of Ink# by Paul M. M. Cooper
Grace by Paul Lynch
The Good People by Hannah Kent
The World of Tomorrow by Brenden Matthews
The Underworld by Kevin Canty
Golden Hill by Frances Spufford
The Lost Letter# by Mimi Matthews
The Viscount and the Vicar's Daughter by Mimi Matthews [publishing in 2018]
The Hidden Thread by Liz Trenow
Be Still the Water by Karen Emilson

Books about Books

The Uncommon Reader+ by Alan Bennett
Morningstar by Ann Hood
Fahrenheit 451 by Annie Spence

Books About Writers
Manderley Forever by Tatiania de Rosnay
In the Great Green Room: The Brilliant and Bold Life of Margaret Wise Brown# by Amy Gary
As I Knew Him, My Dad Rod Serling# by Ann Serling
Everything I Need to Know I Learned in the Twilight Zone: A Fifth Dimension Guide to Life#
by Mark Dawidziak
Dickens and Christmas by Lucinda Hawksley
Dickens: Compassion and Contradiction by Karen Kenyon
Charlotte in Love: The Courtship and Marriage of Charlotte Brontë by Brian Wilks
The World Broke in Two: Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster and the Year that Changed Literature by Bill Goldstein
Over The Hill and Far Away: A Life of Beatrix Potter by Matthew Dennison
A Secret Sisterhood: The Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf  by Emily Midorikawa
Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley
The Making of Jane Austen by Devoney Looser

War Novels
Devastation Road Jason Hewitt
Brave Deeds# by David Abrams
Spoils by Brian Van Reet

Woman's Fiction
Only Child by Rhiannon Navin
A Hundred Small Lessons by Ashley Hay
The Last Neanderthal by Claire Cameron
The Welcome Home Diner by Peggy Lampman
Hello, Sunshine by Laura Dave
800 Grapes by Laura Dave
A Spool of Blue Thread+ by Anne Tyler
The Heirs by Susan Rieger
The End of Men by Karen Rinaldi
Bridget Jones's Baby by Helen Fielding
The Rosie Project+ by Graeme Simsion
Little Paris Bookstore+ by Nina George

Mysteries, Suspense, and Thrillers
Exposed by Lisa Scottoline
The Queen of the Flowers by Kerry Greenwood
Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinsborough
The Cuban Affair by Nelson DeMille
Death of a Busybody by George Bellairs
Dr Sam Johnson, Detector by Lillian de la Torres
Perish From the Earth: A Lincoln and Speed Mystery by Jonathan Putnam
The Breakdown by B. A. Paris

Most of these books received 3 to 5 stars because if I really don't like a book I excuse myself and bow out.

Some of the popular books, including some book club selections, were my least favorites. I did not finish A Man Called Ove or The Little Paris Book Store for book club, I just sped-read to the end. While my book club members were mostly bored or confused by Wharton, I enjoyed Age of Innocence. I learned that most readers want a plot-driven book with characters of pluck and personality. I really try to consider that in my reviews, while also offering my reaction.

I learned several things looking over this list, and I hope to use my insights as I plan and select books for 2018 reading. I miss having more time to write my reviews, but then I worry I might miss reading another amazing book if I cut back. I also now have a huge TBR pile because I am mostly reading upcoming books. We will see if I can cut back in 2018...or read even more books!

To read reviews of any of these books use the Search side bar on the right and type in the book title or author.

Thank you for reading The Literate Quilter this year!
You can also follow me on Facebook at The Literate Quilter,
on Goodreads at https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/28397995-nancy
and on Twitter at @NancyAdairB