THE BLUE DOOR

Readers of the first two volumes of The Quilt Trilogy (A Stitch in Time, 1994, etc.) will delight in how Rinaldi (Keep Smiling Through, p. 535, etc.) brings all the pieces of her multigenerational saga together in this final work. Amanda Videau loves life on her family's South Carolina plantation, Yamassee. Then Grandmother Abigail sends her to Lowell, Mass., ostensibly to give Amanda a chance for adventure and independence. But Abigail's real hope is for Amanda to make peace with her estranged great-grandfather and to sell him on the idea of buying Yamassee cotton for his textile mill, the largest in New England. During Amanda's long steamship trip to the North, the ship blows up, killing nearly all its crew and passengers. Amanda, who saw the man who caused the explosion and knows that he will kill her, too, assumes the identity of a girl she met on the ship and flees. With the killer on her trail, no money, and a false identity, she finds employment in her great-grandfather's mill. Life as a mill girl is grim, and it isn't long before she protests, with the other workers, the abominable working conditions. Whether they've covered the previous books or not, readers will enjoy this rip-roaring tale of adventure and suspense; Amanda and all the other characters inhabit a revealing and credible historical milieu. (bibliography) (Fiction. 12+)