Elm Creek Quilts [04] The Runaway Quilt (42 page)

Sylvia tucked her hands into the fold of the quilt to warm them, marveling at chance and fate, and wondering if those long-ago events had not instead been shaped by a merciful providence. If Joanna had not lost her way in the storm, if she had not stumbled across the abandoned cabin and found shelter there, the lives of the Bergstrom family would have taken an entirely different, forever unknowable course.
Sylvia might never have existed.

Yet she very well might have. She would never know whether Joanna was truly her great-grandmother. She had reminded Margaret and Evelyn of this, repeatedly, warning them that they might be giving their precious family heirloom to someone with even less certain ties to the quiltmaker than their own. But they insisted Sylvia keep it, saying they were acting on faith rather than proven fact.

So Sylvia accepted the quilt with a grateful heart.

She allowed her gaze to travel from the ruins of the cabin to the sky. She found the North Star, as bright and as constant as when Joanna had followed it to freedom, but a freedom that was not destined to endure. For Joanna’s son, the dream had come true, although he was never to know the sacrifice his mother had made in allowing only herself to be taken away, though she must have longed to bring him with her, even into slavery, if only to hold him one last time.

A wind stirred, rustling the boughs of the elm trees lining the road to the back of Elm Creek Manor. Sylvia snuggled her hands deeper into the quilt and turned back toward home.

She passed the red barn Hans Bergstrom had built into the side of the hill, twenty paces east of what had once been the cabin’s front door. She crossed the bridge over Elm Creek, and from there she spotted a light in a window. Andrew’s room. He likely had heard her rise and depart, and even now waited for her safe return. She wondered if Joanna had seen a light in the window of the Bergstrom home upon her arrival so long ago, and if she had found comfort in its warm glow.

Sylvia gazed to the heavens and said a prayer for Joanna, hoping, as Gerda had, that she had at last found the peace and comfort denied her in life. For Sylvia knew by faith if not by fact that Joanna had planned to return to Elm Creek Manor for her son. That much was evident in every stitch of the Runaway
Quilt, which Joanna must have pieced by night after her day’s work was done, quilting patterns to help her remember where she had traveled, how she had made her journey, so that one day she could find her way back again. In stolen moments she had labored on her masterpiece, recalling the signal she had helped Gerda make, biding her time until she could once again take flight like the Birds in the Air she created from the castoff fabric of the household, piecing a symbolic map from the discarded clothing of her owners, who must have mocked “that runaway’s quilt” and the inscrutable effort of the woman who made it. Somehow Joanna had been prevented from following the patchwork cues north to Elm Creek Manor, and the descendants of those who had enslaved her had claimed her quilt as their own. Joanna would never know that generations later, her quilt would complete the journey she herself had been unable to undertake.

Sylvia climbed the stairs and crossed the veranda. She was home. This was her home, and this was her family, as it had always been and would ever be. Whoever her real grandparents were, she was the descendant of Joanna and Anneke and Gerda. The women who had shaped her origins had shaped her, and she would cherish them all as her ancestors, and accept their mystery as she had all else they had bequeathed her.

The Runaway Quilt
is a work of fiction.
The debate about the role of quilts as signals on the Underground Railroad is ongoing, with the oral tradition often at odds with documented historical fact. In this novel, I have tried to remain faithful to the historical record while also presenting a plausible explanation for the evolution of the legend. For more information about quilts during the era of the Underground Railroad and the Civil War, please see Barbara Brackman’s excellent resources,
Clues
in the Calico, Quilts from the Civil War,
and
Civil War Women.

THE RUNAWAY QUILT

Jennifer Chiaverini

Reading Group Guide

In
The Runaway Quilt
,
Jennifer Chiaverini returns to Elm Creek Manor and the Bergstrom family lineage.

After Sylvia Bergstrom Compson
lectures at a quilt guild meeting in South Carolina, a former Elm Creek Quilts camper approaches her and asks her to examine a very old and unique quilt that had been in her family for generations. When Sylvia discovers that the patterns sewn into the quilt contain an unmistakable image of Elm Creek Manor, she realizes that there may be more to her family’s antebellum history than she’s been told. Sylvia searches the attic of Elm Creek Manor, hoping for answers, and she unearths three more quilts as well as the journal of Gerda Bergstrom. Gerda was the spinster sister of family patriarch Hans, and the pages of her memoir contain a story Sylvia never could have imagined. The story illuminates the true legacy of the Bergstrom family and the realities of their connection to the Underground Railroad, giving Sylvia and the reader insight into a period of history fraught with social tension, dangerous secrets, and conflicts of conscience and belief that split even the closest of ties. Led to question all she believed about herself and her family, Sylvia is forced to come to terms with her new perceptions, drawing on the comfort, support, and love of her friends as well as the best of her heritage to accept her past and move forward.

1. What did you think of
Anneke’s decision in June of 1859, which she claims to have made in the best interest of her family? Did you see it as a betrayal, or an act of protection? If you were in Anneke’s position, what would you have done?

2. Gerda often notes that Hans’s high-handed treatment of Anneke was unwise. Do you think his attitude played a part in Anneke’s choice? What might he have done differently? How might that have changed the eventual outcome?

3. When Sylvia reads that Jonathan married Claire, though he loved Gerda, she dismisses him as a “spineless, selfish fool” (p. 174). Do you agree with her, or do you think he did the honorable (if not the right) thing? Were you surprised by Thomas’s perspective on the situation, as laid out in his letter to Dorothea?

4. The more she reads, the more Sylvia struggles to come to terms with the truth about the Bergstrom family’s history. Is she justified in the judgments she makes about Anneke and Gerda? How much are her assumptions biased by her more recent personal history with her own sister, Claudia?

5. What do you think of Gerda’s decision to purposely
keep the name of Joanna’s son hidden? Why do you think she did it? What does it say about her character?

6. At the end of the novel, Sylvia and Grace discuss whether it was right never to tell Joanna’s son about his heritage. What do you think was the right course? Ultimately, do you feel that revealing difficult truths about the past leads only to pain, or do you feel that the disclosure of even painful truths eventually leads to some more significant understanding? Do you think Sylvia is better off knowing what she knows? Do you think that by not telling Joanna’s son about his mother, the family denied him something valuable?

7. Gerda is ashamed of the surprise that she feels upon learning that Mr. Abel Wright, a colored man, also operates a station on the Underground Railroad. Discuss the conflicting views of race and social status that surface throughout the novel. Did any particular attitude surprise you? Do you think it was impossible for anyone at the time, even the most dedicated Abolitionists, to consider blacks and whites as equal? Do you think that the Bergrstrom family overcame the divide through the choices they made about Joanna’s son?

8. Gerda seems to accept her destroyed reputation rather serenely. Do you think this is because she felt she hadn’t anything left to lose at that point? Or do you think she acted out of guilt—that by shouldering the burden of a scandal, she somehow atoned for her family’s role in Joanna’s fate? Or do you think there are other reasons for her actions and her acceptance of them?

9. Kathleen and Rosemary argue about the best way to preserve the letters Thomas wrote to Dorothea. Do you believe that documents of historic value, even those as personal
as letters between a husband and wife, are best preserved in a museum? Or do you think they should stay within the family they belong to?

10. As Grace notes, it has never been proven that quilts were used as signaling devices on the Underground Railroad. What do you think? Can you think of a signal that might have worked better?

11. Various characters throughout the novel make the point that, while Gerda promises a faithful accounting of the events that transpired, there’s no way for the memoir to encompass the entire truth. How differently do you think the account would have read if Hans had written it? Anneke? Joanna?

12. Do you think Sylvia’s decision to finally marry Andrew in the end shows an acceptance of the past (both in terms of the Bergstrom legacy, and her own rocky relationship with Claudia) and a decision to really move forward? Do you feel that Sylvia has changed by the end of the novel? In what ways?

1. Research real signals used by stations on the Underground
Railroad before and during the Civil War. Are you surprised by what you found?

2. Look up examples of “Birds in the Air” and “Log Cabin” quilt patterns. What do the block names and imagery evoke for you?

3. If you could leave a message in a quilt for future generations to discover, what might you stitch? Why?

4. Read about the Bergstroms’ World War II history in
The Quilter’s Apprentice
. Compare the Bergstrom families in the two historically significant eras. Do you detect echoes of the past in the more contemporary characters and setting?

5. Visit the author’s website at
www.elmcreek.net
for photos of quilts featured in the Elm Creek Quilts series, as well as information on Jennifer Chiaverini’s novels, fabric lines, and pattern books.

1. What inspired you
to write
The Runaway Quilt?
Do you have a special interest in the antebellum period or the Civil War era?
I’m fascinated by history, especially women’s roles in American history, and writing the Elm Creek Quilts novels has given me the opportunity to study and write about a variety of historic periods and places. The era of the Underground Railroad and the Civil War were tumultuous times that display some of the best and worst sides of humanity. My personal heroes are people who face adversity with moral courage and dignity, whose hunger for justice and compassion for others lead them to stand up for what is right even at great risk to themselves. It’s little wonder, then, that my favorite characters to write about either possess similar qualities, or are given opportunity to rise to these qualities but fail. What slavery and the Underground Railroad say about our country—that we are capable of both great moral failings and the potential for goodness—resonates strongly even today, perhaps especially today, and as a creative person, I am drawn to explore and try to understand that conflict.

2. How did you come up with the theme of the Underground Railroad signal quilts for the story?
Like many quilters, I was fascinated by the folklore
about signal quilts used along the Underground Railroad. The stories so captivated my imagination that I included the legend of the Log Cabin block with a black center square in my first novel,
The Quilter’s Apprentice,
in which Sylvia mentions that her great-grandparents had sheltered runaway slaves on their central Pennsylvania farm. It worked well as an interesting bit of history for that story, but even then I thought the concept was rich and intriguing enough to deserve an entire book of its own.

3. The idea of using a quilt as a map or a mnemonic device is fascinating. Do you know if this actually occurred?
According to folklore, quilts were used as signals to indicate a station on the Underground Railroad. Other stories describe maps stitched into quilts or directional cues hidden within the secret meanings of quilt block names. However, numerous historians have disputed these claims, pointing out that many of these assertions were based upon incorrectly dated quilts, that the time and resources required for making a single quilt would have made the systematic use of quilts as signals impracticable, that no testimonies of escaped slaves mention signal quilts, and that no signal quilts from that era have been conclusively identified. In
The Runaway Quilt,
my characters engage in this debate just as real-life quilters and historians do. As the story unfolds, I try to provide an explanation for the evolution of the legend, honoring the oral tradition while also adhering to confirmed historical fact.

4. Your novel takes serious historical fact and stitches it into the seams of personal relationships and romance. Do you find it difficult to strike a balance between the two?
I don’t make a conscious decision to balance one mood, theme, or plot element against another. My writing process is more intuitive than that—I don’t begin with an outline, and I don’t know how the story will end when I begin
writing. I prefer the process of discovery, of allowing the characters to interact with one another and seeing where that leads.

5. Did the manuscript evolve much between when you first started and finished?
Not as much as my first three books, but I had planned
The Runaway Quilt
for years, long before I even found a publisher for
The Quilter’s Apprentice
. My friend and fellow writer Christine Johnson inadvertently gave me the idea for
The Runaway Quilt
after she critiqued the eighth chapter of
The Quilter’s Apprentice
in our writing workshop. Upon reading the scene where Sylvia shows Sarah the gazebo and talks about the legend of the Log Cabin quilt with black center squares, Christine wondered what would have happened if someone had made such a quilt, not knowing it was a secret signal, and unwittingly beckoned fugitive slaves to her home. I realized how potentially compelling and powerful a story that explored this question could be, so I tucked it away in a corner of my imagination, mulling it over in my subconscious for years until I felt I was ready to develop it.