Persecution stalked the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) in its infancy. But by 1894, Kelsey, Texas, became a safe mother colony for Southern Mormons. Hamberlin, a devoted worshiper, shares the history, hopes, and lifestyles of these early Mormons through twenty-two pristine, eight-pointed-star quilt blocks hidden in the St. Lake City closet of her husband’s aunt. More than ninety years old, all blocks bear a person’s name. Hamberlin knew this quilt was important, but didn’t know why. She began an exhaustive research project to identify every name and return each square to the family of origin, “like children going home.”

Chapter by chapter, square by square, Hamberlin unearths key documentation about the early lives of Southern Mormons, while linking the 1929 squares to the once-thriving town of Kelsey. The research becomes her purpose in life as she sleuths diaries, photos, and oral histories that vitalize the culture, lifestyles, and worship of Southern Mormons from the Civil War to the present. Life’s little stories—school awards, a child’s first banana split—merge with the big ones: infant mortality, disease, subsistence, and arduous travels. Quilting was an everyday pastime in Kelsey, as it has been elsewhere throughout the ages—a time-honored tradition that blends, warms, beautifies, and comforts.

With joy, diligence, and enthusiasm, Hamberlin sews these stories together, interspersing perspective via relevant tales from her own life. A self-described puzzle solver with a “thing for numbers,” this task seems tailor-made for her. The author’s unpretentious writing proceeds as meticulously as a talented seamstress and is interwoven with authentic, verified, and honest human histories. These stories will be treasured by Mormons, venerated by history buffs, and held in awe by genealogists. Hamberlin ends with a reminder to write stories down before it is too late to learn from the past.

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