New York Times Bestselling author Maisey Yates lives
in rural Oregon with her three children and her husband, whose chiseled jaw and
arresting features continue to make her swoon. She feels the epic trek she
takes several times a day from her office to her coffee maker is a true examples
of her pioneer spirit.
Author Links
Twitter: @maiseyyates
Facebook:@MaiseyYates.Author
Instagram:
@maiseyyates
Confessions from the Quilting Circle by Maisey Yates has Mary Ashwood and her three daughters reuniting in
Bear Creek after the death of Addie, Mary’s mother. The four women jointly inherited two
properties along with the contents from Addie and now they need to decide what
to do with the homes. While in the attic
of one of the homes, Lark Ashwood finds a quilt swatch book along with the
pattern for a special quilt. Lark suggests
that the four women finish Addie’s creation.
The four women go on a journey of self-discovery that will bring long
buried emotions and secrets out in the open.
These ladies can bring their family back together one stitch and
revelation at a time. I thought Confessions
from the Quilting Circle was well-written with developed, realistic
characters. The story it told from Mary,
Hannah, Avery, and Lark’s point-of-view plus there are diary entries from two
of their ancestors. It did take me a
little while to get into the story with the changing viewpoints. This book touches on some difficult
topics. The author handles them very
well. We see what happens when emotions
and secrets are kept suppressed. It is
important for each person to discover their own path and follow it--To be your
own person. It was interesting learning
about a craft café. I thought it was a
clever idea. Confessions from the Quilting Circle has family, relationships,
misunderstandings, secrets, communication issues, love, depression, and so much
more. Confessions from the Quilting Circle is an emotional novel with sister squabbles, creative crafts, surprising
secrets, unfinished issues, teenage to-do’s, and a gregarious grandma.
Excerpt
March 4th, 1944
The dress is perfect. Candlelight
satin and antique lace. I can’t wait for you to see it. I can’t wait to walk
down the aisle toward you. If only we could set a date. If only we had some
idea of when the war will be over.
Love, Dot
Present day—Lark
Unfinished.
The word
whispered through the room like a ghost. Over the faded, floral wallpaper, down
to the scarred wooden floor. And to the precariously stacked boxes and bins of
fabrics, yarn skeins, canvases and other artistic miscellany.
Lark Ashwood had to wonder if her grandmother
had left them this way on purpose. Unfinished business here on earth, in the
form of quilts, sweaters and paintings, to keep her spirit hanging around after
she was gone.
It would be like her. Adeline Dowell did
everything with just a little extra.
From her glossy red hair—which stayed that
color till the day she died—to her matching cherry glasses and lipstick. She
always had an armful of bangles, a beer in her hand and an ashtray full of
cigarettes. She never smelled like smoke. She smelled like spearmint gum, Aqua
Net and Avon perfume.
She had taught Lark that it was okay to be a
little bit of extra.
A smile curved Lark’s lips as she looked
around the attic space again. “Oh, Gram…this is really a mess.”
She had the sense that was intentional too.
In death, as in life, her grandmother wouldn’t simply fade away.
Neat attics, well-ordered affairs and
pre-death estate sales designed to decrease the clutter a family would have to
go through later were for other women. Quieter women who didn’t want to be a
bother.
Adeline Dowell lived to be a bother. To
expand to fill a space, not shrinking down to accommodate anyone.
Lark might not consistently achieve the level
of excess Gram had, but she considered it a goal.
“Lark? Are you up there?”
She heard her mom’s voice carrying up the
staircase. “Yes!” She shouted back down. “I’m…trying to make sense of this.”
She heard footsteps behind her and saw her
mom standing there, gray hair neat, arms folded in. “You don’t have to. We can
get someone to come in and sort it out.”
“And what? Take it all to a thrift store?”
Lark asked.
Her mom’s expression shifted slightly, just
enough to convey about six emotions with no wasted effort. Emotional economy
was Mary Ashwood’s forte. As contained and practical as Addie had been
excessive. “Honey, I think most of this would be bound for the dump.”
“Mom, this is great stuff.”
“I don’t have room in my house for
sentiment.”
“It’s not about sentiment. It’s usable
stuff.”
“I’m not artsy, you know that. I don’t
really…get all this.” The unspoken words in the air settled over Lark like a
cloud.
Mary wasn’t artsy because her mother hadn’t
been around to teach her to sew. To knit. To paint. To quilt.
Addie had taught her granddaughters. Not her
own daughter.
She’d breezed on back into town in a candy
apple Corvette when Lark’s oldest sister, Avery, was born, after spending
Mary’s entire childhood off on some adventure or another, while Lark’s
grandfather had done the raising of the kids.
Grandkids had settled her. And Mary had never
withheld her children from Adeline. Whatever Mary thought about her mom was
difficult to say. But then, Lark could never really read her mom’s emotions.
When she’d been a kid, she hadn’t noticed that. Lark had gone around feeling
whatever she did and assuming everyone was tracking right along with her because
she’d been an innately self focused kid. Or maybe that was just kids.
Either way, back then badgering her mom into
tea parties and talking her ear off without noticing Mary didn’t do much of her
own talking had been easy.
It was only when she’d had big things to
share with her mom that she’d realized…she couldn’t.
“It’s easy, Mom,” Lark said. “I’ll teach you.
No one is asking you to make a living with art, art can be about enjoying the
process.”
“I don’t enjoy doing things I’m bad
at.”
“Well I don’t want Gram’s stuff going to a
thrift store, okay?”
Another shift in Mary’s expression. A single
crease on one side of her mouth conveying irritation, reluctance and exhaustion.
But when she spoke she was measured. “If that’s what you want. This is as much
yours as mine.”
It was a four-way split. The Dowell House and
all its contents, and The Miner’s House, formerly her grandmother’s candy
shop, to Mary Ashwood, and her three daughters. They’d discovered that at the
will reading two months earlier.
It hadn’t caused any issues in the family.
They just weren’t like that.
Lark’s uncle Bill had just shaken his head.
“She feels guilty.”
And that had been the end of any discussion,
before any had really started. They were all like their father that way. Quiet.
Reserved. Opinionated and expert at conveying it without saying much.
Big loud shouting matches didn’t have a place
in the Dowell family.
But Addie had been there for her boys.
They were quite a bit older than Lark’s mother. She’d left when the oldest had
been eighteen. The youngest boy sixteen.
Mary had been four.
Lark knew her mom felt more at home in the
middle of a group of men than she did with women. She’d been raised in a house
of men. With burned dinners and repressed emotions.
Lark had always felt like her mother had
never really known what to make of the overwhelmingly female household she’d
ended up with.
“It’s what I want. When is Hannah getting in tonight?”
Hannah, the
middle child, had moved to Boston right after college, getting a position in
the Boston Symphony Orchestra. She had the summer off of concerts and had
decided to come to Bear Creek to finalize the plans for their inherited
properties before going back home.
Once Hannah had found out when she could get
time away from the symphony, Lark had set her own plans for moving into motion.
She wanted to be here the whole time Hannah was here, since for Hannah, this
wouldn’t be permanent.
But Lark wasn’t going back home. If her
family agreed to her plan, she was staying here.
Which was not something she’d ever imagined
she’d do.
Lark had gone to college across the country,
in New York, at eighteen and had spent years living everywhere but here. Finding
new versions of herself in new towns, new cities, whenever the urge took her.
Unfinished.
“Sometime around five-ish? She said she’d get
a car out here from the airport. I reminded her that isn’t the easiest thing to
do in this part of the world. She said something about it being in apps now. I
didn’t laugh at her.”
Lark laughed, though. “She can rent a car.”
Lark hadn’t lived in Bear Creek since she was
eighteen, but she hadn’t been under the impression there was a surplus of ride
services around the small, rural community. If you were flying to get to Bear
Creek, you had to fly into Medford, which was about eighteen miles from the
smaller town. Even if you could find a car, she doubted the driver would want
to haul anyone out of town.
But her sister wouldn’t be told anything.
Hannah made her own way, something Lark could relate to. But while she imagined
herself drifting along like a tumbleweed, she imagined Hannah slicing through
the water like a shark. With intent, purpose, and no small amount of sharpness.
“Maybe I should arrange something.”
“Mom. She’s a professional symphony musician
who’s been living on her own for fourteen years. I’m pretty sure she can cope.”
“Isn’t the point of coming home not having to
cope for a while? Shouldn’t your mom handle things?” Mary was a doer. She had
never been the one to sit and chat. She’d loved for Lark to come out to the
garden with her and work alongside her in the flower beds, or bake together.
“You’re not in New Mexico anymore. I can make you cookies without worrying
they’ll get eaten by rats in the mail.”
Lark snorted. “I don’t think there are rats
in the mail.”
“It doesn’t have to be real for me to worry
about it.”
And there was something Lark had inherited
directly from her mother. “That’s true.”
That and her love of chocolate chip cookies,
which her mom made the very best. She could remember long afternoons at home
with her mom when she’d been little, and her sisters had been in school. They’d
made cookies and had iced tea, just the two of them.
Cooking had been a self-taught skill her
mother had always been proud of. Her recipes were hers. And after growing up
eating “chicken with blood” and beanie weenies cooked by her dad, she’d been
pretty determined her kids would eat better than that.
Something Lark had been grateful for.
And Mom hadn’t minded if she’d turned the music up loud and danced in some “dress up clothes”—an oversized prom dress from the ’80s and a pair of high heels that were far too big, purchased from a thrift store. Which Hannah and Avery both declared “annoying” when they were home.
Her mom hadn’t
understood her, Lark knew that. But Lark had felt close to her back then in
spite of it.
The sound of the door opening and closing
came from downstairs. “Homework is done, dinner is in the Crock-Pot. I think
even David can manage that.”
The sound of her oldest sister Avery’s voice
was clear, even from a distance. Lark owed that to Avery’s years of motherhood,
coupled with the fact that she—by choice—fulfilled the role of parent liaison
at her kids’ exclusive private school, and often wrangled children in large
groups. Again, by choice.
Lark looked around the room one last time and
walked over to the stack of crafts. There was an old journal on top of several
boxes that look like they might be overflowing with fabric, along with some old
Christmas tree ornaments, and a sewing kit. She grabbed hold of them all before
walking to the stairs, turning the ornaments over and letting the silver stars
catch the light that filtered in through the stained glass window.
Her mother was already ahead of her, halfway
down the stairs by the time Lark got to the top of them. She hadn’t seen Avery
yet since she’d arrived. She loved her older sister. She loved her niece and
nephew. She liked her brother-in-law, who did his best not to be dismissive of
the fact that she made a living drawing pictures. Okay, he kind of annoyed her.
But still, he was fine. Just… A doctor. A surgeon, in fact, and bearing all of
the arrogance that stereotypically implied.
One of the saddest things about living away
for as long as she had was that she’d missed her niece’s and nephew’s childhoods.
She saw them at least once a year, but it never felt like enough. And now they
were teenagers, and a lot less cute.
And then there was Avery, who had always been
somewhat untouchable. Four years older than Lark, Avery was a classic oldest
child. A people pleasing perfectionist. She was organized and she was always
neat and orderly. And even though the
gap between thirty-four and thirty-eight was a lot narrower than twelve and
sixteen, sometimes Lark still felt like the gawky adolescent to Avery’s sweet
sixteen.
But maybe if they shared in a little bit of
each other’s day-to-day it would close some of that gap she felt between them.
Kris
The Avid Reader
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