The Quilt Before The Town

Some secrets are stitched too deep to stay buried.

When a second trunk turns up in Cedar Hollow - older than the first, older than the town itself - Abby Vance and her quilting circle unfold a mourning quilt no one was ever meant to read. Its dark panels were cut from a dead woman's dresses. Its stitches hide a map, a name, and a crime the whole valley spent a hundred and seventy years pretending never happened.

Her name was Ada Pearl. She was here first - the schoolteacher who filed the very first claim on the valley's spring and taught the founders' own children their letters. And one hard winter, the three families who wanted her water decided the mountain pass was closed... and let her die alone in the snow. Then they wrote "no people" in the deed, took everything, and named the town after themselves.

But Ada did have people. A fifteen-year-old girl who loved her sewed the truth into cloth and passed it down, keeper to keeper, waiting for hands brave enough to finally read it.

Now, as Cedar Hollow prepares to celebrate its founding, Abby and the circle face an impossible choice: expose the beautiful lie the whole town is built on - or let a good woman stay forgotten forever. Because the quilters have always known one thing the founders never did:

You can bury a woman. You can't bury the truth once someone reads it in the cloth.

The Quilt Before the Town is the third Cedar Hollow Quilters Mystery - a warm, gently unraveling tale of small-town secrets, hard-won grace, and the stitches that bind the living to the dead. Perfect for readers who love cozy mysteries with heart, history, and a found family of unforgettable women.

Includes two recipes from the Cedar Hollow kitchen.