Author’s Note:

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The original title of my last novel, Fallen Women, was Holladay Street. Holladay was the Denver street where most of the city’s 19th century brothels were located. After my agent read the manuscript, she phoned me and said, “You have to change the title. Your readers are going to think this is a Christmas book.” A week later, she called again and suggested, “Why don’t you write a Christmas book–a Christmas quilt book?”

Easy for you to say, I thought. What would I write about? For me, coming up with a plot is the most difficult part of writing a book.
 

Not long after that, I had lunch with a writer friend, a Jewish man who obviously didn’t celebrate Christmas and probably couldn’t thread a needle. “Come up with a plot for a Christmas quilt book,” I joked.
 

He thought a minute. “What if a woman makes a quilt for her husband, a soldier in Iraq? The soldier dies…” and the plot spilled out.
 

I couldn’t write about Iraq, I told him, but I could set the story in the Civil War. So with some changes and refinements, that lunchtime scenario became A Quilt for Christmas. I don’t think I even picked up the lunch tab.