THE QUILT

In 1944, with his father at war and his mother working the night shift at the munitions factory, the narrator—“the boy”—goes to live with his grandmother Alida in northern Minnesota. At a neighboring farm, seven miles and seven hours away, Alida and several local women have gathered for the birth of Kristina’s baby. They share a ritual of holding a quilt and telling “quilt stories” about their lives and those who have passed. It’s a quiet, beautiful tale of magic in the faces and hands of the women holding the cloth. So much of life, death, and the strength of women is told in evocative prose rich in vivid details. Begun in The Cookcamp (1991) and continued in Alida’s Song (1999), this is Paulsen’s ode to his grandmother and what women “had to do to keep life, and families, together during the war.” A story to savor and share and Paulsen at his best. (Fiction. 8-12)