Madison, WI

Book tour event for The World’s Fair Quilt: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel. Reading, Q&A, signing.

Jennifer Chiaverini returns to the well-loved circle of Elm Creek Quilters to illuminate a nearly forgotten jubilant moment in women’s history during the trying years of the Great Depression. In chapters alternating between 2004 and 1933, THE WORLD’S FAIR QUILT: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel (William Morrow: On sale: April 1, 2025) stitches together a story of sisterhood and sibling rivalry, guilt and resentment, forgiveness and peace.

In her eighth decade, Sylvia Bergstrom Compson is content to be back at Elm Creek Manor—the home she fled, in grief and despair, after her first husband and younger brother were killed in World War II, followed by an irreparable falling-out with her elder sister, Claudia. Her fifty years’ absence has made each day at her ancestral estate in rural Pennsylvania all the more precious, especially since she is surrounded by her new family—her husband, Andrew, and kindred quilters. Thanks to dedicated, gifted faculty and the business acumen of Sarah McClure, the Elm Creek Quilt Camp has blossomed into a perennially popular quilter’s retreat. Sylvia often marvels at how, in her golden years, she has forged cherished friendships, founded a thriving business, rediscovered the artist within herself, fallen in love with a long-lost childhood friend—and still feels as if the best is yet to come. All would be well—if not for new, unexpected financial worries.