The Sewing Machine

 

The Sewing Machine
by Natalie Fergie

So it's been a while since I have blogged about any of the books I've been reading.  I don't really have a reason for letting this part of my reading experience slide, but I do have a reason for beginning it again. 

My memory is just not what I wish it was and the stories slip away from me almost as soon as I close the last page of a book.  With that said, I will warn you that I will at times be sharing spoilers.  But I hope to acknowledge their arrival with plenty of time and space for you to avoid them if you desire.  The spoilers will be to help me remember what I've read, no harm intended. 

The Sewing Machine is literally about a sewing machine, from the time it was constructed and the circumstances around that time, to it's place in the current world.  We follow the people who've built it, used it and restored it throughout the book but never quite sure how they all come together.  

It's an interesting story and it skips from past to present and back again and then suddenly, a new character pops in.  I have to say that threw me off a tad bit. 

The stories of the characters are good but not so good that I was constantly pulled back to the book.  In fact, the main reason I finished the book is to discover what thread (pun intended) was going to eventually connected them.  

I'm giving this a 3 shot rating.  It was "okay" but I don't know if I'd read it knowing it wasn't going to move me much. On the other hand, I don't feel like I wasted my time, either. 

SPOILER ALERT

The sewing machine created in this story was at a singer factory late 1800's early 1900's.  The workers tried to go on strike which failed and caused many to lose their jobs. The woman who tested this machine hid a note in a bobbin before she & her fiance left the community to find new work. 

That machine was eventually purchased by a couple, the woman used it to supplement their income. They kept detailed records of everything made on the machine. At a later time they take in a young pregnant woman who has been disowned by her family and they become her family.  

In the 2000's the child of that unmarried woman returns to his grandparents home to settle the estate. He doesn't know that the people he thought were his grandparents are actually not.  He discovers the notebooks full of details about the items sewn on the machine and becomes fascinated with it and begins to use the machine. This leads him to become friends with a woman who make jewelry from old sewing machine parts.  The book ends when they discover it was this woman's great grandmother who left a note hidden in the machine, which had been saved with the sewing records all those years by the man's grandparents.