The Sewing Machine by Natalie Fergie is a beautifully written story of a sewing machine that stitches a family’s patchwork history together piece by piece. It opens in 1911 at a Singer factory in Scotland where a young seamstress journals her life in the factory, and after, by stitching pieces of fabric into a notebook. A generation later, her daughter continues the family story into her own notebook. More than 100 years after the grandmother’s sewing machine was made, a young man discovers the notebooks and his family history.
The story cleanly travels time, from generation to generation, with occasional look-backs or retrospectives. Characters are well-built, and the scenery beautiful, welcoming the reader into the storyline. This is truly a lovely story that will keep you captivated from the first paragraph, “Secrets are hidden in the fabric and creases of the old hospital. They turn up on a daily basis, but their importance is not always recognized by those who discover them.”
As I traveled through time in the story, it made me stop to think about how my family history has traveled, in many cases not well. It also made me take another look at the antique treadle machine I have stored in my basement that was handed down from my great-grandmother and grandmother, to my mom, and then to me. What stories could that machine tell of my ancestors, emigrating from Ireland and homesteading here in Wisconsin? Perhaps this story will prompt you to recognize the importance of the fabric and creases of your history, too.
