Book Description:
About Quilts of Love: Quilts tell stories of love and loss, hope and faith, tradition and new beginnings. The Quilts of Love seriesfocuses on the women who quilted all of these things into their family histories. A new book releases each month and features contemporary and historical romances as well as women's fiction and the occasional light mystery. You will be drawn into the endearing characters of this series and be touched by their stories.
 In 1951, Frankie Chasing Bear is a Lakota caught between cultures. She wants to raise her son Harold to revere his Lakota heritage, but she knows he will need to become as a white man to succeed. After his father's killed in a barroom brawl, Harold and Frankie move to Arizona, where she begins a Lakota Star pattern quilt for Harold with tribal wisdom sung, sewn and prayed into it.She distrusts Christians, as her own parents were forced to convert at an Indian School, until she meets BIA agent Nick Vandergriff, a half-Lakota who's also caught between cultures. Nick must convince Frankie that white men and Christians aren't all bad as he tries to win her heart in order to put the stars back into her sky. Learn more about this book and the series at the Quilts of Lovewebsite.  About the Author: Linda S. Clare is an award-winning coauthor of three books, including Lost Boys and the Moms Who Love Them (with Melody Carlson and Heather Kopp), Revealed: Spiritual Reality in a Makeover World, and Making Peace with a Dangerous God(with Kristen Johnson Ingram). She is also the author of The Fence My Father Built. She has taught college-level creative writing classes for seven years, and edits and mentors writers. She also is a frequent writing conference presenter and church retreat leader. She and her husband of thirty-one years have four grown children, including a set of twins. They live in Eugene, Oregon, with their five wayward cats: Oliver, Xena the Warrior Kitty, Paladine, Melchior, and Mamma Mia!
Learn more about Linda at: http://www.lindasclare.com
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I'm torn with this one. I have come to love and enjoy the Quilts of Love series from Abingdon Press but this one just didn't satisfy me, sadly. In my personal opinion (which is all my reviews are) it fell flat. Let me begin by telling you the things I liked about this book. I really like the Lakota people, they are one of my favorite tribes, and I was very intrigued to learn that they quilted! I also enjoyed some of the characters and scenes. The Navajo Fair is mentioned and that part was enjoyable. And one of the characters Mrs. Green really comes around and turns out to be a pretty good character! Even though I didn't like some of the things she did and the way she treated others I really started to like her by the end. And finally I really liked the message of forgiveness tied in the end. But from the beginning it felt like the characters "loved" each other too soon. There isn't any big revelation when Frankie comes to Christ. She comes to understand forgiveness, but if she accepts Jesus as her Lord and Savior I missed it. :/ Which really disappointed me because I was looking forward to that scene! There is a mystery slipped in here that I enjoyed up until the thief is found out. I didn't like that at all because it was one of the best Christian witnesses in the book! And while I understand that we are all humans with a sinful nature and we slip up it still bothered me that he almost became a stumbling block for the characters he had witnessed to. Finally the end didn't seem like the end. I kinda felt like someone somewhere cut out the end of my book and left me hanging! Some very important questions weren't answered about character's decisions and it ended abruptly... Overall I am happy I read it for the new things I learned I just wished there were more...
Songs: "Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone)" by Chris Tomlin, "God-Shaped Hole" by Plumb, and "That's How You Forgive" by Shane & Shane
John 3:16
~ASC
*I received this book for the purpose of reviewing it this in no way affected my opinion and the above are my true thoughts and feellings about A Sky Without Stars. ~ASC
