A Tapestry of Secrets by Sarah Loudin Thomas

A Tapestry of Secrets by Sarah Loudin Thomas is the next novel in the Appalachian  Blessings series by this author.  The books in this series center on life in Laurel Mountain, where Ella had grown up on the family farm.  Ella had always had dreams of marrying the man of her dreams and coming back to the farm to create her artwork.  Now she had just broken up with Mark, the biggest mistake of her life, and her mother was calling her back home because her grandmother had had a stroke.  It didn't take long to figure out pack quickly and leave the apartment where her lawyer former boyfriend wouldn't leave her alone and kept wanting her to reconsider.  Ella just wants to escape.  She knows that Mark will always be trying to get ahead in his field even if he has to embellish his accomplishments to do so.  None of this is making Ella comfortable and she slowly realized that Mark is just the wrong person for her.  She wants a Christian man that she can build an equally yoked partnership and love.  She wants a family much like what she grew up in.
 Her family had taught her so much about the art of quilting and her grandma was very much a part of that.  Ella willingly moves into Perla's house and to  help her to recover from her stroke.  Grandma Perla is improving and doing so much better and Ella is finding out some of the secrets of her grandmother's past.  Ella's aunt and Perla's daughter, Sadie, had been born before Ella's grandma and grandpa married.  Sadie had never before wanted to know who her biological father was because she didn't want to hurt the memory of her father who had died 30 years ago.  Everyone in the family still grieved the loss of Casewell though it had been 30 years now--even Ella though she had not even been born when he died.  She had grown up hearing what a good man he was and she wanted her future husband to be like that. 
Ella finds out that there is a rich man buying up a lot of the land in the Laurel Mountain area surrounding Wise.  Ella had been surprised when she went to church and saw the attendance was so much less than she remembered.  Her dad had said that the church might not last much longer if something didn't change. Now she was hearing rumors that this new man was looking to maybe buy the church and the land surrounding it.  Maybe Ella hadn't been here in a long time but she felt like the church shouldn't be sold but no one else seems to care as much as Ella except Mavis the pianist at the church. Should Ella move back here?  Could she build her life in Laurel Mountain as her family had done for generations before?
I loved this story and plan to buy the rest of the series now that I know it is a series.  The reader does not have to have read the rest to enjoy reading this novel.  In fact I didn't know until I was completely through the story and reading the back of the book.  This novel holds the readers interest and I think would be good reading for woman or older girl.
I received this book from BethanyHouse for this review.