Author’s Note:

I’ve always admired early needlepoint and samplers. I often looked at it in museums or antique shows, and imagined the (usually) women who’d spent so many hours sitting alone or with family members, perhaps stitching while someone read aloud, by the dim light of a fireplace or whale oil lamp. Needlework was a way to be creative; to decorate clothing and home; to add beauty to worlds often were bereft of decoration.

Sewing was a skill demanded of all women.

Needlepoint, on the other hand, was for generations was a skill of privilege or a vocation. Wealthy women employed others to do plain stitching, and even those skilled at needlepoint themselves, employed others to create tapestries and bed hangings and other, large, pieces of embroidery.

As a child, I remember my grandmother, her worktable next to her chair, sewing, darning, tatting, knitting, or embroidering. Like the women of earlier generations, her hands were never idle. She tried to teach me, but my hands were too clumsy (and I was too impatient) to perfect any skills. I embroidered a few handkerchiefs, but none I could be proud of. The only one of my grandmother’s skills with needles I managed to make my own was knitting.

So when I had the opportunity to begin a new mystery series, I decided it was the perfect opportunity to earn more about needlepoint and other forms of embroidery.

Vintage and antique needlepoint would be the center of my series, which also would include the creation of custom needlepoint, done today by highly skilled stitchers for modern and antique chairs, pillows, wall hangings, and valences. I decided to set my series in a Maine harbor town with a working waterfront (unlike Weymouth, in my Shadows series, which is set in a town on a tidal river,) and then I began to find my characters, all of whom are survivors.

TWISTED THREADS, the first book in the Mainely Needlepoint series, introduces Angie Curtis, a young woman with a troubled background, her grandmother, and some of the men and women of Haven Harbor. I hope my readers will welcome them, and look forward to learning more about them in future books.

Questions and Topics for Discussion:

• Angie has mixed feelings about her mother. Do you think her mother was a good parent? If she had not disappeared, how do you think her relationship would have been with a teenaged Angie?
• Is it surprising that Angie doesn’t know about Mainely Needlepoint until she comes home? What else has Charlotte (Gram) kept from her?
• How do you feel about the relationship between Gram and Rev. Tom?
• Is it likely that a minister would have the hobby Rev. Tom has?
• How has Haven Harbor changed in the past ten years? How has it stayed the same?
• Angie is torn between wanting to leave Haven Harbor again, and staying. What is pulling her in each direction?
• How did you feel about the emails exchanged between Katie Titicomb and Jacques Lattimore?
• Was Katie right to have continued the correspondence? Would Jacques’ future have been different if she hadn’t?
• When did you realize Lauren was in an abusive relationship? How many people do you think knew about it? Was there anything that anyone could have done to help her?