The Last Runaway
Showing posts with label The Last Runaway. Show all posts
Reading winners
Here are the five lucky winners of a copy of The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier:
and they are...
Congratulations I will be in touch to get your details!
Stay tuned because there will be a sewing related giveaway later on today, open worldwide!
Paperback GIVEAWAY: The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier
**Giveaway now closed**
'Set in the tangled forests and sunlit cornfields of Ohio, Tracy Chevalier's vivid novel is the story of bad men and spirited women, surprising marriages and unlikely friendships, and the remarkable power of defiance.
When modest Quaker Honor Bright sails from Bristol with her sister, she is fleeing heartache for a new life in America, far from home. But tragedy leaves her alone and vulnerable, torn between two worlds and dependent on the kindness of strangers.
Life in 1850s Ohio is precarious and unsentimental. The sun is too hot, the thunderstorms too violent, the snow too deep. The roads are spattered with mud and spit. The woods are home to skunks and porcupines and raccoons. They also shelter slaves escaping north to freedom.
Should Honor hide runaways from the ruthless men who hunt them down? The Quaker community she has joined may oppose slavery in principle, but does it have the courage to help her defy the law? As she struggles to find her place and her voice, Honor must decide what she is willing to risk for her beliefs.'
The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier is now available in paperback and has been chosen as a Richard and Judy Book Club pick this Autumn.
'Her biggest novel yet, and her best... it's the characters that stay with you, and the courage of the abolitionists.' The Times
'Her best novel since Girl with a Pearl Earring... As a serious novel about a genuine moral dilemma, it is highly recommended.' The Independent
You can read my review of The Last Runaway here and also read more about Tracy's research and the quilt she made here. I have since re-read the novel and can honestly say I enjoyed it just as much as the first time. I also finally read Girl with a Pearl Earring and was just as enchanted. If you haven't read any of her books you really should and now you have the opportunity to win a copy of The Last Runaway.
HarperCollins are kindly giving away 5 paperback copies of The Last Runaway to Charm About You readers.
**GIVEAWAY NOW CLOSED**
UK entries only.
**PLEASE leave your email address in the comment, a lot of you are no reply bloggers and can not be contacted!
The giveaway will be open until Monday 28th October and the five winners chosen by random.org.
Good luck!
p.s. If you were one of the original lucky winners of a hardback copy and have had a chance to read it then please let me know what you thought by leaving a comment on the original review post. Thank you!
quilts by Tracy Chevalier and winners
Last week I did a review and held a giveaway of Tracy Chevalier's new novel The Last Runaway.
Tracy sent me an email and is kindly showing us her quilts!
I'm so impressed with her dedication and quilting... I have yet to finish an EPP quilt myself! I wasn't surprised she's taken to quilting though, it is rather addictive ;)
So on to our winners...
Random.org picked the numbers - you will have to trust me because I don't have time to capture all the boxes and picture them here - they are:
Please could you all email me with your details and addresses and HarperCollins will send the books out to you. If I don't hear from you within 48 hrs I will draw another winner.
A huge thank you to Tracy for sharing her work and thank you to HarperCollins for the great giveaway!
If you didn't win now is the time to order your copy of The Last Runaway.
Tracy sent me an email and is kindly showing us her quilts!
Dear Lucy,
Thanks so much for your lovely review of The Last Runaway. I feel honoured that a quilter liked it so much! I thought your followers might be curious to see the quilt I made during my research for the book.
For my quilting research I read a lot, looked a lot (especially the V&A exhibition in 2010, and also the York Quilt Museum). But I needed to DO it too, so I took a quilting class, and then joined the Flying Geese, a local quilting group that meets every Monday. Indeed, I’m still with the group, and will probably be making quilts for a long time to come.
I chose to make a simple four-patch quilt, as I didn’t want to get bogged down in anything complicated for my first quilt. Also I made it at three-quarters the size of a single quilt, one I use on our sofa rather than on a bed. Even so, it took me a year! (Mind you, I was writing a novel at the same time, so rather busy.) Here is the quilt:
It’s all hand-made and hand-quilted, as I wanted to imitate the process my heroine Honor Bright went through. (Also I don’t have a sewing machine or know how to use one.) The fabrics are from various quilt shops in the UK and US, as well as from stalls at the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace London.
I learned so much for making the quilt – about sewing (you don’t have to knot, you can backstitch!), about pattern and putting different fabrics together, about fudging and tucking under loose ends. Funny, I do all that when I’m writing a novel, but didn’t realise it also applies to quilting! Making the quilt made it a lot easier for me to write about Honor making quilts. And it is a non-verbal activity, very welcome after all the reading and writing I do.
My next project? I am making a quilt along the lines of the famous Gee’s Bend quilts made by African Americans. They are more improvisational, very colourful, and extremely hard to imitate! Here’s what I’ve done so far:
I'm so impressed with her dedication and quilting... I have yet to finish an EPP quilt myself! I wasn't surprised she's taken to quilting though, it is rather addictive ;)
So on to our winners...
Random.org picked the numbers - you will have to trust me because I don't have time to capture all the boxes and picture them here - they are:
12 - Gill
26 - Katy
2- Archie the Wonder Dog
8 - Andrea
21- Pomegranate Quilts
19 - Svea Polster Broughton
9 - Cayt
18 - Alice and Florence
28 - Strawberry Patch
4 - The Faerie Factory
Please could you all email me with your details and addresses and HarperCollins will send the books out to you. If I don't hear from you within 48 hrs I will draw another winner.
A huge thank you to Tracy for sharing her work and thank you to HarperCollins for the great giveaway!
If you didn't win now is the time to order your copy of The Last Runaway.
new Tracy Chevalier book giveaway!
HarperCollins very kindly sent me a copy of Tracy Chevalier's new novel The Last Runaway.
There were so many elements of this novel that interest me; Quakerism, American history and of course quilting. My maternal grandparents were Quaker and I have been an attender myself, obviously I quilt too, so I was excited to read this book and I wasn't disappointed! I have had to stop myself from writing an essay (I could... there are so many things to discuss about this novel) but here is a quick idea of what the book is about and my review of it.
The story is set in 1850s Ohio during the last days of slavery and follows the protagonist, Honor Bright, as she settles in a Quaker community after travelling from England.
Honor is a likeable, slightly naive character and it's easy to warm to her. The people she encounters really shape who she becomes and I found myself waiting for some of them to appear again in the story because they were so alluring.
The structure of The Last Runaway makes for an enjoyable read, with elements of the story covered in letters both to her family and best friend back home, and enough drama to keep a good pace - the kind where you want to read just one more chapter! It is not an obvious tale and there are twists that keep you guessing about everyone's fate. The story isn't overly dramatic though and I appreciated Tracy Chevalier's subtle and unpretentious style.
The intertwining of tales of the slaves, the Underground Railroad and Quaker beliefs was fascinating and the moral/religious/cultural opinions and differences are well construed. As were the smaller details, the styles of quilting and ways of life that varied between the American and English.
Honor had always preferred patchwork to applique, feeling that to sew pieces of fabric on top of large squares of material was somehow cheating, a shortcut compared to the harder task of piecing together hundreds of bits of fabric, the colours blended so that the whole was graduated and unified and made a pleasing pattern. Though some quilters despaired of the rigid geometry and the accuracy required for making patchwork, to Honor it was a happy challenge.
- The Last Runaway, Tracy Chevalier
Obviously as a quilter it was so interesting to discover not only the different blocks they would have been making but also the quilting styles. Tracy clearly did a great amount of research for this novel and she even learnt to quilt herself. The characters so well describe the joys and frustrations of quilting. Honor even struggles with making things she doesn't love (we've all been there!). Even the way the notions, quilt designs and quilting history are recounted is enchanting and these were probably some of the parts I loved the most.
Honor sat and opened her sewing box to lay out her things. This ritual, at least, was familiar. The sewing box had belonged to her grandmother, who, when her sight began to fail, handed it on to the best stitcher among her granddaughters. Made of walnut wood, it had a padded needlepoint cover of lilies of the valley in green and yellow and white. This was an image Honor had known from an early age; eyes shut, she could perfectly recreate it in her mind, as she had often done to distract herself during her seasickness.
- The Last Runaway, Tracy Chevalier
It is not often I immediately want to reread a book but that's what I am doing!
What better way to celebrate World Book Day than with a good book and, thanks to HarperCollins, you can win your own copy of The Last Runaway. In fact they are giving away 10 copies to my lucky readers!
**GIVEAWAY NOW CLOSED**
The winners will be drawn on Monday 11th March by random.org
The Last Runaway will be released on 14th March and I highly recommend it.
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