New book, great story - The Map Quilt

Author Lisa Lickle snagged me with the first sentence. Her new release, The Map Quilt, caught me up in the lives of Hart and Judy Wingate, a young Wisconsin couple expecting their first baby. A former teacher myself, I knew just how Judy felt lumbering her way through the final days of school with her fifth-grade class.

But Judy refuses to take maternity leave. She wants to hear the speaker scheduled to culminate their studies of Harriet Tubman. She also anticipates the release of her husband’s latest ”green” project for his employer—until someone steals the prototype. And burns down the barn. 

Do these disasters have anything to do with an old quilt upstairs, an unidentified body Hart’s mother finds buried on the property, and the famed Underground Railway of the 1860s?

Lickle’s lively writing and flesh-and-blood characters drew me into the family farmhouse kitchen and right up to the table for a cup of hot coffee and vanilla nut cookies. And her story’s fast pace left room for nothing but a must-know yearning rivaling that of Hart and Judy.

There’s more than one story unraveling between the pages of The Map Quilt, and more than one family’s heritage on the line.

The Map Quilt is the sequel to Lickle’s original cozy mystery from Barbour, The Gold Standard. But Map Quilt stands on its own as well. If you're looking for a good summer read, pick up Lickle’s latest—and a tall glass of lemonade to go along with it.

For more about Lisa Lickel and her great new book, visit http://www.lisalickel.com/2012/02/map-quilt.html