THE WORLD'S FAIR QUILT - Jennifer Chiaverini
The Elm Creek Quilts Series
William Morrow
ISBN - 978-0063433571
ISBN10 - 0063433575
April 2025
Fiction

Pennsylvania - 1930s and 2000s

It's autumn in Pennsylvania and Sylvia Bergstrom Compson has some decisions to make in order to preserve and promote her Elm Creek Quilts Camp at Elm Creek Manor. Despite its popularity, finances are becoming increasingly difficult to manage. In her eighties, Silvia is reluctant to make many needed changes but is realizing that that hesitation is only making things worse. So, when Summer Sullivan, one of Elm Creek Quilter's founders, arrives to ask Silvia to loan her a quilt that Silvia and her sister, Claudia, made for the Sears National Quilt Contest to enter at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, Silvia once again hesitates. Why?

The contest was a challenge for the sisters. Claudia, the eldest at fifteen, and Silvia, thirteen, had been quilting since they were little girls, learning from their mother. After she died, Silvia, especially, kept up with the lessons she'd learned from her mother, while Claudia was less interested, and, to Silvia less skilled or particular about her stitches. So, the fact that they were going to work together on the Worlds Fair quilt was a challenge for both. But they diligently finished each of their parts of the process, submitting the quilt just in time for the contest.

Silvia was reluctant to reveal to Summer that the quilt brought back some difficult memories for her, and it was one more decision she was having difficulty making. The quilters camp was so important to her, and to all of those who had been attending it for years, that Silvia knew she needed to let those who had all of the new ideas to keep the place going forward do what she was dragging her feet over. They needed those new ideas to promote the Manor, and to make needed repairs around the farm. Can Silvia put the past behind her and move forward?

THE WORLD'S FAIR QUILT is book 23 of the Elm Creek Quilts Series. For Silvia this is a time for serious decision making, something she's finding hard to do because of memories and secrets from the past. Will her reluctance affect the quilters' camp? Enjoy this sweet, thoughtful tale.

Jani Brooks