How to Make an American Quilt (novel)
How to Make an American Quilt is the debut novel of Whitney Otto. The novel tells the intersecting stories of several generations of women who together are part of the same quilting circle in Grasse, California. The novel was made into a movie of the same name in 1995 directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse and starring Winona Ryder as Finn Dodd.
In the present day 26 year old history graduate student Finn contemplates marriage. She decides to return to Grasse, California for the summer where eight members of a quilting group, some of whom she is related to, are sewing a free-form crazy quilt for her wedding.
Sisters Glady Joe and Hy (short for Gladiola Josephine and Hyacinth) are sisters who live together now that they are both widowed. Glady Joe was married to Arthur Cleary, but as the years wore on they discovered that they had more of a platonic friendship and the two stopped having sex.
In their 50s, James Dodd, Hy's husband, became ill with ALS. He soon needs to be confined permanently to a hospital. Hy finds herself thinking that she hopes he will die soon and becomes frustrated with herself, abruptly leaving the hospital. She calls Glady Joe's husband Arthur and orders him to drive her as far out of town as possible. Watching her take a nap Arthur is struck by her similarity with his wife and kisses her. Hy awakens and the two have sex. They then return to Glady Joe's home where she immediately realizes what has happened and becomes infuriated with her husband, smashing things and throwing them at her husband. She then begins to tile the walls with the objects she has smashed. Finally feeling she cannot forgive her sister Glady Joe goes to the hospital intending to tell James about the affair but seeing him and her sister together she has a change of heart and decides to forgive Hy and Arthur.
When she is 17 and diving at a public pool Sophia Darling is spotted by Preston Richards, a young college student. He asks her out on a date and she takes him to a quarry where he watches her dive and then the two have sex. Preston believes that he has fallen in love with her and tells Sophia he wants to be a geologist while she dreams of travelling with him and swimming all around the world. However Sophia is impregnated after her first sexual encounter and the two settle down in Grasse and both have unhappy lives, never able to travel the way they wanted to. The couple have three children; Duff, who wants to go to school and have a career, Preston junior who is very close to his mother, and Edie, who, when she is 16 also conceives a child. Sophia tries to force Edie to marry the father of her child but when she refuses she sends her away to have the child and then give it up for adoption. In her 9th month Edie runs away to live with Duff who now works in Chicago.
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