Ludelphia Bennett is a strong-willed ten-year-old, and boy, do you want her on your side. You especially want her on your quilting team. She likes to tell stories with her bits of fabric, and while she tries to save her pneumonia-struck mother on what might be her deathbed, Ludelphia stuffs her fabric scraps and her precious needle into the pocket of her burlap-sack dress so she can cross the river on the barge that’s linked to a cable to the other side of the river. Her goal is to get to the town of Camden, Alabama, just across the river from Gee’s Bend, and fetch the doctor who might save Ludelphia’s mother’s life. Unfortunately, the amount of rain Gee’s Bend has just gotten makes the river so high and so fast it snaps the cable and sends Ludelphia rushing downriver and knocking her overboard. Along her way to the town, the girl runs across the mean old woman, Mrs. Cobb, who is convinced that the people in Gee’s Bend are responsible for her niece’s and her husband’s deaths. And since her husband was the owner of the land the people of Gee’s Bend farm, she feels she has the right to take all the land and everything the people own as payback. She’s convinced that Ludelphia and her neighbor, Etta Mae Phillpot, are witches who killed her niece and husband. The story is well written, historically accurate, and spellbinding. Quilt makers, in particular, will relate to Ludelphia’s deep love of telling stories with fabric and with the calmness quilting brings to her soul.
BIBLIO:2010, New South Books, Ages 10 and Up, $11.95.
REVIEWER: Sarah Maury Swan
sarahsbookreflections 