Murders on Elderberry Road: A Queen Bees Quilt Mystery by Sally Goldenbaum

Author:Sally Goldenbaum
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 2940012817174
Publisher: Kansas City Star Books
Published: 2003-05-09T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

Storm at Sea

Po showered and slipped into a pair of jeans, pulled on her tennis shoes and a bright yellow sweatshirt, and headed for the kitchen and a cup of wake-up coffee. Hoover lumbered along behind her. After neglecting her book severely for over a week, she was determined to make some progress this morning.

She loved writing about these amazing women. With reluctance, she had finally finished the section on the Civil War and closed the chapter on the Underground Railroad and brave, young women like Elizabeth Keckley, a slave who had bought her freedom and become an amazing quilter. She took her young son and went to quilt for Mary Todd Lincoln, consoling the widow after her husband’s tragic murder.

Po poured cold water into the coffee carafe and thought about the irony. While she was writing about one Mary coping with a murdered husband, another Mary, so close to Po’s own life, was suffering the same.

Today she would move on to the suffrage movement and a young woman named Abigail Dunaway who migrated with her family to a new life in Oregon. Abigail began to quilt out of necessity — to provide warmth along the cold journey. And when forced to support her family, she did it the only way she knew how, by quilting.

Po opened the refrigerator and rummaged around for a bag of coffee beans. She thought about the impact the suffrage movement had on women. The leaders cried out for women to cast aside their sewing — a sign of subservience, some thought — and join the marches. And Abigail Dunaway did, marching and speaking and organizing masses of women to fight for their rights.

The attitude reminded Po briefly of the perception of some of the shop owners who thought a quilt shop unworthy of their block.

Po found it fascinating that something so intricate and amazing as the creation of a quilt could have been considered a lowly task and frowned upon so fiercely by women seeking rights to a bigger, more equal world. Of all the women she knew in the small town of Crestwood, the Queen Bees were among the most informed, self-contained, and the most comfortable in their own boots. And as for art — goodness, who could hold a candle to Susan’s fine eye for color or Leah’s amazing sense of space and shape?

What would she have done, living a century and a half ago? Po wondered. She put down her notes and set her glasses on the desktop. Probably what Abigail Dunaway did — yes, she might abandon her craft to speak her beliefs, to effect change. But wasn’t it a good turn of history that crafts and art and liberated women could all live in the same room? And quilts were now displayed in the Smithsonian, in art galleries everywhere. It was a shame, she thought, closing the refrigerator door, that the Elderberry shop owners weren’t so enlightened. Perhaps the Queen Bees could teach them a thing or two.

Po checked the cupboard shelf and sighed.

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