Fans will love the further development of the Elm Creek characters, though others may find the plotting a bit staid.
In this sixth of a series (a project that has spawned a quilting book and a line of Elm Creek fabrics), fans will find a pastiche of melodrama, female empowerment, and, of course, a quilting project.
Elm Creek Manor, the ancestral home of Sylvia Compson, has become a thriving school and meeting place for quilters. Sylvia is the guiding spirit of the operation, though she has the help of her eight co-owners, friends and confidants who run the school. This time, the story is centered on these friends, allowing each a chapter, though each quilter’s narrative covers the same time-frame and events. Sarah begins, secretly arranging a wedding quilt for Sylvia and her dapper new husband Andrew. The old couple eloped, and Sarah is asking former Elm Creek students each to send in a block for the quilt. Summer, the youngest member, then takes up the storyline, struggling with how to tell her mother Gwen (also an Elm Creek Quilter and a university professor) that she has moved in with her boyfriend. Given that Summer is almost thirty, it seems an odd dilemma, but when Gwen does find out, she’s livid that her daughter is sacrificing her independence to a man. We soon learn Gwen has problems of her own. Expecting to be named chair in her department, she’s passed over because of the seriousness of her academic research (or perceived lack thereof) in, you guessed it, quilting. The most charged chapter belongs to Bonnie. Her husband has changed the locks on their home, drained their bank account, and is trying to sell their condo to an unscrupulous developer. If that’s not enough, Bonnie’s beloved fabric store is robbed and vandalized, with the thief (who may be someone she knows) stealing all of the blocks sent in for Sylvia’s wedding quilt. Never fear, all turns out well in Elm Creek country.
Fans will love the further development of the Elm Creek characters, though others may find the plotting a bit staid.Pub Date: April 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-7432-3615-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2004
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
Deep schmaltz in the Bible Belt.
Christian-fiction writer Martin (The Dead Don’t Dance, not reviewed) chronicles the personal tragedy of a Georgia heart surgeon.
Five years ago in Atlanta, Reese could not save his beloved wife Emma from heart failure, even though the Harvard-trained surgeon became a physician so that he could find a way to fix his childhood sweetheart’s congenitally faulty ticker. He renounced practicing medicine after her death and now lives in quiet anonymity as a boat mechanic on Lake Burton. Across the lake is Emma’s brother Charlie, who was rendered blind on the same desperate night that Reese fought to revive his wife on their kitchen floor. When Reese helps save the life of a seven-year-old local girl named Annie, who turns out to have irreparable heart damage, he is compassionately drawn into her case. He also grows close to Annie’s attractive Aunt Cindy and gradually comes to recognize that the family needs his expertise as a transplant surgeon. Martin displays some impressive knowledge about medical practice and the workings of the heart, but his Christian message is not exactly subtle. “If anything in this universe reflects the fingerprint of God, it is the human heart,” Reese notes of his medical studies. Emma’s letters (kept in a bank vault) quote Bible verse; Charlie elucidates stories of Jesus’ miracles for young Annie; even the napkins at the local bar, The Well, carry passages from the Gospel of John for the benefit of the biker clientele. Moreover, Martin relentlessly hammers home his sentimentality with nature-specific metaphors involving mating cardinals and crying crickets. (Annie sells crickets as well as lemonade to raise money for her heart surgery.) Reese’s habitual muttering of worldly slogans from Milton and Shakespeare (“I am ashes where once I was fire”) doesn’t much cut the cloying piety, and an over-the-top surgical save leaves the reader feeling positively bruised.
Deep schmaltz in the Bible Belt.Pub Date: April 4, 2006
ISBN: 1-5955-4054-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: WestBow/Thomas Nelson
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2006
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