Heartfelt Historical Novels
Featured Works
Explore our latest literary journeys and the stories that define our collective voice.
After the Storm
This historical novel shares the unforgettable story of a 19th-century quilter through some of the most challenging times in American history. This story is told "in her own words" through a lifetime of diary entries and a memoir she dictated to a granddaughter shortly before her death. Hannah Applegate Benson Stone weathered many personal storms in her life yet found strength in her family, friends, and community. Orphaned very young during the tumultuous years of the Civil War and raised by a caring aunt in a small New England farming community, she grew from a frightened child to a confident woman and successful quilt pattern designer. This fictional memoir is based on many of the author's own life experiences and those of her family transposed to another time. They will mourn and rejoice with Hannah as she loses her first love but finds new love with her second, in this timeless story of loss and renewal. Readers who enjoyed novels by Nancy Turner: "These is My Words," "Sarah's Quilt," "The Star Garden" and "Resolute," will enjoy this one as well
Sarah's Quest
Against her parent's wishes, Sarah Benson leaves behind her stifling family home in New Hampshire. She boards the train heading west in 1898 with James, a man she loves but barely knows. With the idealism and naivety of youth, they leave everything behind for a life-changing adventure in the Arizona Frontier. On the way, Sarah reveals that she is pregnant. When they arrive in Flagstaff, they marry. Soon a rancher offers James and Sarah work on an isolated ranch. Sarah grows to love her independence and the wide-open skies of the west, but James's drinking and gambling cause a rift between them. After her daughter is born, her marriage begins to unravel, and James becomes violent. Sarah flees to her parents but realizes that New Hampshire is no longer where she belongs. A yearning for the west and the possibility to live free and love again takes her back to Arizona for a final confrontation with James and the chance to build a life she can embrace on her own terms. This is the second book in a historical fiction series, Hannah's Legacy. Readers who enjoyed the novels of Nancy Turner, Janette Oke, Kristin Hannah and Robyn Carr, will love this story.
Becca's Story
Becca grew up in a family struggling to work through their grief after a tragedy. She felt invisible and alone. The one bright spot in her life was her grandmother with whom she spent her summers while growing up. It was her grandmother who taught Becca to sew and to quilt and left her a beautiful antique treadle sewing machine. When she later attends art school, Becca begins to find herself and her "tribe." As she approaches her 30th birthday, Becca yearns for something more in her life. She is bored and frustrated. Her relationship with her mother, with whom she shares ownership of a high-end art and craft gallery, is difficult and stressful. Her saving grace is her best friend, Ashlyn, and the other members of her Cambridge Creative Quilters' bee. Curious about what she can learn from the generations before her, Becca sets out on an adventure to visit a Queen Ann Victorian home in a small New Hampshire town built by her great great grandfather in the 1890s. What Becca discovers is more than she could have ever dreamed of — lost family secrets, a new love, and a new purpose for her life, while following in the footsteps of her ancestors.
The Journey Behind the Words
Cary Flanagan has written a compelling family saga, Hannah's Legacy, spanning several generations of New England family, and set near the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Three courageous and creative women overcome tragedies and rebuild meaningful lives for themselves as quilters, mothers, and members of their community.
Hannah, orphaned by the Civil War in Book I; her daughter, Sarah, who impulsively leaves home for the Arizona Territories at the turn of the 20th century in Book II, and Becca, Hannah's great-great-granddaughter, a contemporary art quilter who transforms her life after loss and inherits Hannah's legacy in Book III.
This trilogy is inspired by the author's own family history. All three books, After the Storm, Sarah's Quest, and Becca's Story, are available on Amazon.