The Forgotten Seamstress

Anne Flosnik narrates this dual-time-period novel, which focuses on two characters: a young woman who works in the sewing room of the royal household of King George V and a modern-day woman who discovers a beautiful and somewhat mysterious quilt in her mother's attic. Although Flosnik is generally a top-notch narrator, her performance here seems forced, her voice somewhat affected. As a result, the listener is repeatedly pulled out of the story. This disconnect with the plot is jarring because Trenow's story is quite emotional with its themes of love and loss, motherhood, and the abuse of power. It's an intensely engaging book, but its narration disappoints. J.L.K. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

September 1, 2014
An heirloom patchwork quilt hiding a scandalous royal secret is the link between the generations in Trenow’s (The Last Telegram) solid second novel. The novel pairs the stories of the young women a century apart: Maria Romano, an orphan whose artistic needlework gets her placed in a royal household where she has a dalliance with the Prince of Wales, and Caroline Meadows, whose own artistic talents and ambitions jump-start her career as a contemporary interior designer. Caroline finds the quilt and begins an investigation into it’s provenance. Flosnik treats each character, major or minor, with a sense of distinction and identity. The narrative enthralls as it weaves back and forth between Caroline’s and Maria’s stories—a haunting tale of past and present voiced with grace and beauty. A Sourcebook Landmark paperback.

March 24, 2014
An heirloom patchwork quilt hiding a scandalous royal secret is the link between the generations separating an orphaned seamstress and a modern-day single woman, in Trenow’s (The Last Telegram) solid second novel. Maria Romano, an inmate at the Helena Hall mental hospital, comes to life through a series of taped conversations from 1970, when she was interviewed by a young research student. Fast forward to 2008, when Caroline Meadows, made redundant at her bank job and recently broken up from her boyfriend of five years, discovers she’s pregnant and suddenly becomes curious about the quilt she inherited from her grandmother. The novel pairs the stories of the young women a century apart: Maria, an orphan whose artistic needlework gets her placed in a royal household where she has a dalliance with the Prince of Wales; Caroline, whose own artistic talents and ambitions jump-start her career as an interior designer. Unfortunately, Maria’s saga is much more interesting than that of her modern counterpart, who, as the reader discovers through a convoluted plot thread, has more of a connection to Maria than just her grandmother’s quilt. But nevertheless, this is a page-turner with eye-opening details about the conditions of mental hospitals in the 20th century, as well as the provenance of royal fabrics, the art of quilting, and the vagaries of modern interior design.