Tapestry is a dramatic coming of age saga exploring the 1920’s women’s rights movement through the eyes of two young women and the romance of unrequited love. What were some sources that informed this novel’s development?

My genealogy and fairytales, apparently! Family mysteries inspired the entire trilogy, but after writing Tapestry’s rough draft, I was actually brainstorming what to name the book when I realized Gaynelle’s story mirrored Rapunzel’s in so many ways.

While the fairytale ‘Rapunzel’ may have subconsciously inspired some of my plotline, the bones of the story belong to my ancestors who go back for generations in the Lowcountry of South Carolina. I’ve had a passion for genealogy since age twelve, but progress on my granny’s side was stymied with rumors of adoption, which she denied.

I ran into this local fellow once who looked the spitting image of my uncle, except he had blue eyes like my granny. That man told me he’d been adopted, so I speculated he and my granny might be siblings. The fellow had met his (their?) father only after he was grown up—an old, dying man by the name of Salters, a name you’ll recognize from my story. The trilogy has a mix of real and made-up names, since the stories really are mostly fabrications. As I unearthed bits of information here and there, I tried to fathom scenarios that made sense of all the pieces. Sometimes I even discovered that my guesses had been correct, but I mostly used the facts for a framework, as my muse.

I’ve absorbed much about the time period through my research, listening to family stories and reading local histories, visiting regional museums, even digging into archives. I’ve always been interested in women’s rights, so as I reviewed the news stories of the era from several timeline books, I naturally zoned in on the ones that particularly mattered to women for inclusion in the novel.

I enjoyed watching your characters develop in this story. What were some obstacles you felt were important to defining their characters in the book?

Jessie is the obstacle of obstacles for both Gaynelle and Vivian.

Vivian has a dramatic break from her when she falls seriously ill. That episode—after already having learnt to snatch rare opportunities during brief respites—informs how she learns to live her life: seize the day while she has the chance!

Poor Gaynelle. Her choices are continually undermined. Her exit from the family home is far more reluctant and her life forever constrained by imposed limitations even after she’s away from Jessie. These limitations are a product of her age, gender, and means. Racial boundaries also bar certain friendships and undermine her happiness that way. She does try to make her own choices, but they are inevitably disregarded by those who believe they know better. Gaynelle learns to adapt and occasionally works around these restrictions, but her story depicts the reality of what so many girls and women face both now and then.

What about the 1920’s interests you and makes it ripe for you to write about?

My granny, the muse for a character who appears in Tapestry, was born in 1921. Honestly, that’s truly why I wrote of this era—the 1920s just so happen to be the decade when this portion of my family history falls, but it is a fascinating time period, with so much to draw on.

Such a revolutionary time for women—from their clothing and hair to voting to everything in between! The 1920s were also exactly a century ago, and given how the COVID-19 pandemic echoes the Spanish flu outbreaks, this is an especially interesting time to reflect on what was going on one hundred years ago, how things were changing, how they’ve shifted since then—and how they haven’t.

What can readers expect in book three in The Silk Trilogy?

Well, a love story, of course, this time for Ginny Bell and Jack Caddell. My novels always have love stories, I do believe! Vivian and Gaynelle continue to play significant roles, and there’s a new antagonist in the form of Zingle Caddell, a womanizing, careless alcoholic. He and Jessie Bell loathe one another, which creates a sort of sticky Romeo-and-Juliet situation for Ginny and Jack. There’s a showdown at the end—and deaths, definitely deaths.

Homespun, the last installment of the Silk Trilogy, is due to come out next St. Patty’s Day, March 17th, 2023.

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