| The Runaway Quilt (Elm Creek Quilts Series #4) | 
 enlarge | Author: Jennifer Chiaverini
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Category: Book
List Price: $24.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:   (40 reviews)
Sales Rank: 645895
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 5.9 x 1
ISBN: 0743222261
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780743222266
ASIN: 0743222261
Publication Date: April 2, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The fourth book in the popular Elm Creek Quilts series explores a question that has long captured the imagination of quilters and historians alike: Did stationmasters of the Underground Railroad use quilts to signal to fugitive slaves?
In her first novel, The Quilter's Apprentice, Jennifer Chiaverini wove quilting lore with tales from the World War II home front. Now, following Round Robin and The Cross-Country Quilters, Chiaverini revisits the legends of Elm Creek Manor, as Sylvia Compson discovers evidence of her ancestors' courageous involvement in the Underground Railroad.
Alerted to the possibility that her family had ties to the slaveholding South, Sylvia scours her attic and finds three quilts and a memoir written by Gerda, the spinster sister of clan patriarch Hans Bergstrom. The memoir describes the founding of Elm Creek Manor and how, using quilts as markers, Hans, his wife, Anneke, and Gerda came to beckon fugitive slaves to safety within its walls. When a runaway named Joanna arrives from a South Carolina plantation pregnant with her master's child, the Bergstroms shelter her through a long, dangerous winter -- imagining neither the impact of her presence nor the betrayal that awaits them. The memoir raises new questions for every one it answers, leading Sylvia ever deeper into the tangle of the Bergstrom legacy. Aided by the Elm Creek Quilters, as well as by descendants of others named in Gerda's tale, Sylvia dares to face the demons of her family's past and at the same time reaffirm her own moral center. A spellbinding fugue on the mysteries of heritage, The Runaway Quilt unfolds with all the drama and suspense of a classic in the making.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 35 more reviews...
 Perfect piecing... January 8, 2009
What a great book, beautifully written - or was it pieced? A heartfelt, informative story. I love the histories. I've read the whole series now, but "The Runaway Quilt" has to be the piece de resistance. When I was a child, I lived down the street from a famous historical house in our city, that contained an underground railroad hiding place. I spent hours down in that dank, stone place, reading the placards that told of the drama, and imagining what it must have been like for slaves and protectors alike in that terrible time. Later, I wrote a long poem inspired by the house, that told of a slave's journey. So the book brought back my fascination with that time of courage - and shame, for our country. To those of you who are thinking of reading it: beware! You may not get much sleep, or much done, as it is impossible to put down once you've started!
Sylvia pieces together the story of the Runaway Quilt. January 5, 2008
This book was interesting in that at the start, Margaret Atwood, Sylvia's longtime friend, brings Sylvia a very old quilt trying to figure out the story behind it. Sylvia knows that it has a history by looking at it is a "Birds in the Air," quilt. Frantic for answerss, Sylvia searches the mansion, when in the attic she finds a diary that had been stored away in a trunk. It is that of her great-grandmother Gerda Bergstrom. As Sylvia begins to read, she makes a startling discovery about her ancestors past.
In Gerda's diary is the story of her brother Hans, and Anneke, the woman he rescued in New York when she had no other place to go as she had traveled to the states from Germany. They became married, and having no home to go to, lived in a cabin until a huge home, (what Elm Creek Manor is now), was built then. Anneke was very talented with a needle and thread, capable of doing anything, especially quilts.
At this period of time, slaves were being captured, and some had escaped seeking rest as they were tired from running. Anyone who rescued slaves, and were caught, had to be punished to the full extent of the law.
When a woman, Joanna came knocking on the Bergstrom's door, faint and weak, Gerda pleads with Anneke to take her in though she is a slave on the run northbound. Anneke is afraid, but gives in to help the negro woman, and she ends up staying there. When the slave capturers come around though, she has to hide out. As time moves on, the Bergstroms rescue more slaves which they do by hanging the "Birds in the Air," runaway quilt on the line. Many slaves end up there, and Hans, Anneke, and Gerda go a long time before they are found out.
Sylvia spends the whole summer unravelling this whole history and what becomes of her family in the end. The book travels back and forth from the very distant past to the present.
The Runaway Quilt September 22, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Runaway Quilt: An Elm Creek Quilts Novelis well written with characters you care about. In addition, it provides a history lesson about the underground railroad that is anything but boring.
Awesome July 26, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I thought this book was the best one so far in the series. If you have never read any of the Elm Creek Quilt books, then be sure to start at the beginning with The Quilter's Apprentice.
Runaway Quilt June 8, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Great book.....a must read for those who are into quilts and good stories!!
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