Watermark Books and Cafe

"The Union Quilters" by Jennifer Chiaverini (Dutton, ISBN 9780525952039, $24.95) 

Continuing her Elm Creek Quilts series, Chiaverini crafts a powerful tale of love and sacrifice during the Civil War. As I watched once again the epic series "The Civil War," airing this week on PBS, characters and images from Chiaverini’s book kept flitting across my mind. Like filmmaker Ken Burns, Chiaverini has the ability to bring history to life by placing her fictional characters into well-researched historical settings.   

In 1862, the men of Water’s Ford, PA, answer Lincoln’s call to arms while the women of the Elm Creek Valley turn to quilting to provide blankets for the soldiers. They also “wield their needles for the Union” as they raffle one of their sampler quilts in order to finance and build a meeting hall, resisting the town fathers’ patronizing attempts to grab control. As the men fight for freedom on the battlefield, the women take up their own cause of fighting for their rights against the gender discrimination of the time, all the while supporting one another through their loneliness and fear.  

Two of the characters especially earned my respect and sympathy. African-American residents Constance and Abel Wright have found acceptance and respect in the community, but Abel is repeatedly rejected when he tries to enlist in the Union Army. His wife Constance is torn between her relief at having her husband safe at home and her outrage over the slight he’s been shown by a government he is willing to risk his life to protect. When he is finally able to employ his sharpshooting skills as a member of an all-black Union regiment, Constance’s mixed emotions are a palpable and moving testament to the confusion that wartime engenders. 

From the eloquence of the Gettysburg Address to the horrors of Andersonville Prison, Chiaverini imbues her historical fiction with well-researched details and brings a powerful historical perspective to this story of a group of quilters coping with the changing roles of women and black Americans and the extraordinary experiences they all face during the Civil War. 

Review by Shirley Wells