Arango’s debut novel stitches together a patchwork of people and events to form a believable portrait of an emerging fiber artist.
After collecting several quilts to decorate her first home as a newlywed, community college literature instructor Jo Benjamin begins attending a weekly quilting class. Having never threaded a needle before she turned 30, Jo’s first lumpy quilted placemat frustrates her. It also attracts the attention of Grace, an older quilter with a delightfully sharp wit who says, “[T]he only way to make a perfect quilt is to become a perfect person and then just sew naturally.” Thanks to Grace, introspective Jo loosens her grip on her needle and, eventually, her fiercely held secrets. The pair, along with two other friends, creates a quilt to sell at a holiday fundraiser at the California Montessori school where Jo’s husband teaches and her son attends. After the first successful year, the group creates a new quilt annually for several years, each on a different theme that Jo chooses. Through quilting, Jo finds that she’s finally able to express her deep feelings for world events and those closer to home. Her inner journey mirrors the writing in the novel—some earlier chapters feel choppy and self-absorbed, while later ones bloom with additional dialogue and longer interplay between characters. As she explores her various roles of mother, teacher, volunteer, daughter, wife and artist, Jo discovers that it’s her friendship with Grace that will allow her to uncover and possibly change her true feelings about Christmas. While some characters, such as Jo’s husband and father, seem underdeveloped, the detached, analytical narrator seems so true to life that some readers may be tempted to seek out photographs of her vividly described quilts. Crafters and artists will identify with Jo’s mixed feelings of elation and shame about her work, her fascination with color and texture and her uncertain place between the art and hobbyist worlds. Minor flaws can’t derail this surprisingly touching, but not overly sentimental, holiday story.
Pub Date: May 20, 2011
ISBN: 978-1460928943
Page Count: 262
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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