She collected everything that was inside her.......

Her thoughts and dreams and fears were too big
to be contained within the small neat boundaries
of a traditional block, her life too strange and unique
to be represented by the repetition of the same pattern. 
She collected everything that was inside her ----- 

all the thwarted love, 

the rage, 

the anger, 

the fear, 

the uncertainty ----

and cast it upon her quilts like paint upon a fence.  She would let it spill over the edges, collect in pools on the ground, soak into the earth. She could not be contained.

 This quite incredible passage is taken from the new book by Jennifer Chiaverini entitled, The Lost  Quilter, the most recent in the Elm Creek Quilts series (Simon and Schuster, 2009).  The words relate to the central character in the book, Joanna, a fugitive slave who traveled the Underground Railroad to read safe haven.

I just finished The Lost Quilter this week.

I recommend it highly:

a good storyteller.

a good read.