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    The Forgotten Seamstress
    The Forgotten Seamstress
    The Forgotten Seamstress
    Audiobook8 hours

    The Forgotten Seamstress

    Written by Liz Trenow

    Narrated by Anne Flosnik

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    A shy girl with no family, Maria knows she's lucky to have landed in the sewing room of the royal household. Before World War I casts its shadow, she catches the eye of the Prince of Wales, a glamorous and intense gentleman. But her life takes a far darker turn, and soon all she has left is a fantastical story about her time at Buckingham Palace.

    Decades later, Caroline Meadows discovers a beautiful quilt in her mother's attic. When she can't figure out the meaning of the message embroidered into its lining, she embarks on a quest to reveal its mystery, a puzzle that only seems to grow more important to her own heart. As Caroline pieces together the secret history of the quilt, she comes closer and closer to the truth about Maria.

    Page-turning and heartbreaking, The Forgotten Seamstress weaves together past and present in an unforgettable journey.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateJun 9, 2014
    ISBN9781494572167
    Author

    Liz Trenow

    Liz Trenow is the author of several historical novels, including The Last Telegram, The Forgotten Seamstress, and The Poppy Factory. Liz's family have been silk weavers for nearly three hundred years, and she grew up in the house next to the mill in Suffolk, England, which still operates today, weaving for top-end fashion houses and royal commissions. This unique history inspired her first two novels and her fourth novel, The Silk Weaver. Liz is a former journalist who spent fifteen years on regional and national newspapers, and on BBC radio and television news, before turning her hand to fiction. She lives in East Anglia, UK, with her artist husband, and they have two grown-up daughters.

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    Reviews for The Forgotten Seamstress

    4.5/5

    28 ratings9 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I enjoyed this book a great deal, well written and well read to us. I loved the sewing details that are included in it. Great story, and makes you think it could have happened. I will read more of Liz Trenow`s books.
    • 4/5
      Wonderful narration of book The story was very well developed and definitely worth listening to
    • 5/5
      A beautiful and captivating dual-time story that takes you back and forth between 1910 and 2008.Maria is an orphan in 1910 who, with her tiny hands has become an excellent seamstress. She and her friend Nora are soon whisked away to Buckingham Palace to work as seamstresses. Maria catches the eye of the young Prince of Wales and finds herself in a delicate situation. Not wanting a royal scandal, Maria is taken away to a mental institution. The staff at the mental institution not only take her baby and her sanity, but Maria still has her story that she preserves in a quilt.In 2008, Caroline has just lost her boyfriend and her job. She is also trying to take care of her mother who has dementia. Caroline is helping her mother clean out her house when she comes across a beautiful and unique quilt. Caroline needs something to fill her time, so she decides to try and figure out the history behind it. Maria and Caroline's story are both enthralling and tragic. I found the book more and more addicting as their stories begin to intersect and Caroline becomes closer to finding the mystery behind the quilt. Artfully woven, Liz Trenow brings us back and forth between Maria's story and Caroline's. Although we really only get to meet Maria through a series of transcribed cassette tape recordings when she is an older woman, her story is enchanting and I wanted nothing more than the truth to be unraveled.This book was received for free in return for an honest review.
    • 5/5
      I really loved this book. The way she intertwined the two stories together was brilliant. It is about two women one in the early 1900's who is named Maria and is an orphan who gets adopted as a seamstress for the castle an falls in love with the prince. The other is Coleen. Her life is falling apart. I really loved the stories of the two women and how they come together with the investigation of the quilt. I never expected the ending.
    • 4/5
      This is really two stories, one from the past and one in the present stitched together like the quilt that forms the centerpiece of the novel. The present tale follows Caroline Meadows who finds the quilt as she is helping her mother sort boxes to make way for some home improvements. When she shows it to her friend who works at Buckingham Palace in the art/conservation department she is shocked to see royal materials in the quilt - what were known as the May Silks, used only for the trousseau of Princess Mary of Teck. This sends her on a journey to discover how royal materials were in a quilt from her grandmother.The second and if you ask me, far more interesting story is that of the quilter. She was an orphan named Maria who along with her friend Nora are plucked from their orphanage at a young age to go work in what turns out to be Buckingham Palace in the sewing room because they are both very talented seamstresses. While there Maria catches the eye of the Prince of Wales and well, he's a Prince and she's a very naive young girl. What happens to her is horrifying and forms the basis of the story of the quilt. I don't want to ruin the tale so I will leave you with just these tidbits.If only Caroline's story was as captivating and as well told as Maria's was. Caroline is completely hapless and hopeless and honestly I just didn't find her interesting or believable as a character. If she had been 20 years younger I might have understood some of the decisions she made but not as a 38 year old woman. I have problems with books when characters don't feel real to me. Maria felt more alive and fully developed to me than Caroline who seemed a bit of a cardboard cutout.Ms. Trenow does have a lovely writing style and that kept me reading until the end despite my not caring what happened to Caroline. I wanted to know very much how Maria's life played out - she carried the book for me.
    • 4/5
      very lovely novel :)
    • 3/5
      This book was really sad at times, not the oh no that person died sad, but heartbreaking sad of how Maria was treated. The cruelty of the world made me so angry.

      Maria was young, happy, and fell in love with a prince. You know that that will not end well and it does not. The book is told through Maria when she becomes a seamstress, Maria when she is interviewed in the 70s and is believed to be crazy and through Caroline in our time, she finds a quilt and wants to know who made it.

      The first story leads Maria to her doom. In the 70s flashbacks we see that she was in a mental asylum, but why? And that was the heartbreaking part. I got so angry there that I stopped for a moment. And the thing is, that I did not know if anything Maria said was true either. That was the intriguing part too, did she tell the truth or was she insane?

      So it was a mystery to be solved and the ending was a good one. I enjoyed the book.
    • 4/5
      In 2008, Caroline is clearing out her mother’s attic when she finds a quilt, which her grandmother left to her. It’s an unusual piece of needlework; the seaming and embroidery are extraordinary, and some of the fabrics are very striking silks. So striking that when Caroline shows it to a friend who is a textile expert, she recognizes them as tiny pieces of fabrics known as the May Silks, specially woven for the wedding of Princess May (Mary) of Teck. How they ended up in a patchwork, and in Caroline’s grandmother’s possession, is unknown, but Caroline intends to find out. Another story goes along as Caroline searches for who made the quilt. In 1970, a graduate student in psychology is interviewing an inmate of a mental hospital. The patient, Maria, tells the story of being an orphan who is taught to sew and is selected to work in palace for the royal family. She talks of the Crown Prince, of a baby that was taken away from her, and her belief that she is in the mental ward to keep her from telling the world of the Prince’s baby. All fantasy, of course, the hallucinations of a schizophrenic. There is no way a lower class girl attracted the attention of the Prince! But how are these two woman connected? I enjoyed the puzzle of figuring out the origins of the quilt, the descriptions of life in the palace, and especially the descriptions of the fabrics and clothing. I was less impressed by the characters, however. Caroline and Maria are both people to whom things happen, but who rarely initiate action of any kind. In Maria’s case, a lot of that is out of her control, but her passivity with the Prince is kind of annoying. But she was a teenager in love, and so that’s a pretty common attitude. Caroline, however, is kind of annoying- she is older, supposedly independent, educated, and in control of her own fate, but she seems to float along. While I liked the two women, it was a lukewarm sort of liking. The other characters didn’t have much depth. It’s an enjoyable book but not a stunning one.
    • 5/5
      The Forgotten Seamstress tells the stories of Maria, a woman who found herself incarcerated in a mental hospital in 1918 to avoid a scandal and Caroline, who in 2008 is given a patchwork quilt with a story woven into it. How the two stories are linked becomes clearer and clearer as the book goes on.I thought this was a charming and very lovely story. Incredibly easy to read but not lacking depth at all. Maria's story is a sad one and Caroline's discovery of the history of the quilt is fascinating. As the reader I loved how the stories came together, heading towards a twist in the tale that I hadn't guessed.This book was an absolute pleasure to read.