Dear Reader,
I grew up with my grandmas. I spent weekends and holidays in their tiny, too-hot kitchens watching them bake beloved desserts from recipe cards they pulled from their recipe boxes. I spent Saturdays at the beauty parlor watching them get their hair “did.” But I probably spent the most time in their sewing rooms watching them make my school clothes or turn scraps into beautiful quilts.
My grandma Shipman (Viola, my pen name) stitched overalls at a local factory until she couldn’t stand straight. And my grandma Rouse was also an accomplished seamstress. But even after sewing all day for work, nothing brought them more joy than finding the perfect pattern or creating their own designs and taking a seat at their Singers. It represented one of the first times in my life I was able to witness in real time what happens when talent meets inspiration: incredible joy. Work is no longer work. That changed my life.
My grandmothers both owned Singer sewing machines, and I thought they were the most beautiful things in the world: black with a beautiful gold inlay pattern atop the original, old treadle oak cabinet, glowing with a rich patina.
My grandmothers were like ballerinas at their Singers, their bodies in motion and in tune with the machine. It was a gorgeous dance to watch. They were also the first artists I ever knew, though they were never called that and their cheeks would turn red today at the mere utterance of such a fancy word. But they taught me to create. To take pride in what I created. To continue perfecting my talent.
The Edge of Summer is inspired by these memories. It’s also inspired by the thoughts that spun in my head as I watched them sew, especially as I grew older—what were my grandmas like before they were my grandmas? Did I know everything about them? Where did this love of—and great skill for—sewing come from? And, although I knew of their sacrifices, I wondered how much they truly had to sacrifice, and maybe even hide, in order to get here, right now, happy and sewing in a home with their grandchild watching them work.
The novel is also inspired by the loss of my father-in-law, George, to Covid in 2019. We’ve lost so many to an invisible virus—too, too many—and I never want their names or stories to be lost. George achieved so much in his life, rising from hardship and working his way through college, day and night, finally earning his PhD to become a school superintendent and pass along the importance of education.
Like Miss Mabel in The Edge of Summer, my grandmothers and father-in-law overcame so much in their childhoods. But I know it didn’t come easy. It never does. In today’s age, we have so much information at our fingertips. We seek out our ancestry, searching to find who we are and where we came from. We want to know how our families came to be. My grandma used to say, “We can’t know where we’re going if we don’t know from where we came.” We seek that more than ever these days.
I wrote this novel to remind readers that families are not perfect. They never will be. But if we were blessed to be loved by our family, as flawed as it may have been—and even if our parents were not who we wished they had been or the love they gave was not as much or as demonstrative as we would have liked—we were still blessed to be loved. At its heart, this novel seeks to ask if we should be thankful for those sacrifices and if maybe, just maybe, that love is enough for us to stitch together a beautiful life and future.
I truly hope you love The Edge of Summer. And I’m so excited my next holiday/winter novel will publish this fall! All my best for a beautiful, blessed summer!
XOXO
Wade