What a lovely read this is. I love this author’s books and haven’t read a bad one. It’s set during the American Civil War and is the story of courageous women, their children and their circle of friends. To be honest, it’s not about Christmas or about quilting. A lovely story of family, tolerance and struggles. ( )

A Quilt for Christmas by Sandra Dallas is the story of Eliza, a strong woman who is overseeing her family and farm in Kansas as her husband is off soldiering in the American Civil War. As the book opens she has just finished and sent off to her husband a special quilt meant to keep him warm and sheltered while he is away from his family. While she and her family are staunch believers in freeing the slaves, she is a little off-put by the hatred toward Southerners expressed by her husband in his letters and also that her son seems to be absorbing this hatred.

Sh opens her home to a neighbour widow who needs to escape from the bad treatment she is receiving at the hands of her in-laws and then when the war is over and she learns that she, too, is a widow, she allows an ex-Confederate soldier to stay on her farm as a hired man. She and this man develop feelings for each other much to her son’s disapproval.

A Quilt for Christmas beautifully illustrates the courage and commitment of the women left behind as their men went to fight in the War. As a border state, Kansas had people of both persuasion living side by side and bad feelings toward each other and hiding slaves and moving them along was a decision that each individual needed to make. Family, friendship, loyalty, and tolerance are all important themes in this short but well written account of life in the 1860s. ( )

This book is more than a Christmas book. Eliza sends her Union soldier husband a quilt for Christmas, but then finds out later that not too long after he received the quilt he died in the Civil War. Later a Confederate soldier who found the quilt brings it to her. He ends up working as a hired hand for Eliza and her two children and then they fall in love, much to her son's dismay. Although Eliza has faith in God, the book isn't preachy. ( )

A community of strong women support one another through shared fears and grief as they struggle to keep their farms going while their men are away. ( )

Lovely... there is so much good in this story. Women who band together to support one another through truly difficult things. War and all the high emotion that comes along with it and for the lucky, a realization that there is more in common than different. And grief ... I know that grief of losing a husband and trying to move forward. ( )