The Key on the Quilt

Author: Stephanie Grace Whitson

Genre: Life (a Nebraska prison in the late 1800s)

Series: The Quilt Chronicles

Number in series: 1^st

My rating on a 1-10 scale: 9.5

Type: Fiction

Number of pages: 318

Time period: 1800’s

Passage from book: “If it wasn’t for the occasional night when he tried to kill her, Owen wouldn’t be a bad husband. Jane Marquis risked a sideways glance at him. Moonlight and shadows revealed an all-too-familiar expression on his weathered face, as Owen guided the wagon across the spring prairie towards home. Doing her best to suppress a shiver, Jane ducked her head and closed her eyes. ‘Oh…God.’ It wasn’t much of a prayer, but it was the best she could do.”

My overall opinion: Wow, did I ever enjoy this book! I’ve never read any books before about life in a women’s prison in the 1800s in Nebraska, and I’m guessing you haven’t either. This was an enlightening read! While some “enlightening” books can be quite boring, this one was riveting. I’m making it sound like an interesting text book, but it’s nowhere close to a textbook. It’s a delightful historical fiction type of book. I really enjoyed getting to know each of the main women: Mamie, Jane, and Ellen. They each had a very different role in the book – one was in prison, one was the female … guard/supervisor/boss, and one was the prison warden’s wife. All of their stories were neatly melded into the one book. It was clear how each woman’s faith in God grew, though The Key on the Quilt wasn’t a preachy book at all. I highly recommend that you read this wonderful Christian fiction! And I can’t wait to read the next book, Shadow on the Quilt.

**The author supplied me with a free copy of this book. I have received no compensation for this review. I was not required to write a review, much less a positive one, and the opinions expressed in here are my own.**