The Tapestry in the Attic
by Mary O'Donnell
Annie Dawson was just a child when she first noticed the small tapestry hanging on a wall in Grey Gables, the Victorian house bequeathed to her by her grandmother, Betsy Holden. The tapestry was as much a part of the home as any other part of the beautiful house situated on a hill overlooking the seacoast on the outskirts of rustic and quaint Stony Point, Maine.But when Annie and the members of the Hook and Needle Club search for props for a play to be held in Stony Point’s Cultural Center, they discover a secret hidden for more than 45 years in the old home’s attic. There is a sister tapestry—this one a wall-size work by the same needle artist, based on the ideal woman as pictured in Proverbs 31 in the Bible.Annie and her friends are drawn into the production of the play because it will benefit a fund for breast cancer research. The play, written by a native son of the village and now a nationally known playwright, will feature direction by a professor of theater arts from nearby Longfellow College and the talents of two actors of renown, now retired and living in the Stony Point area.But what artistic hand stitched the tapestries of Grey Gables? The mystery deepens as Annie and her friends discover that the larger tapestry, like the Proverbs 31 woman, has a “price above rubies.” Will the path to solving the mystery once again put Annie’s life in jeopardy? And will the very disease the Hook and Needle Club members are fighting strike down one of their own?Join our mystery-solving band of handcrafters as they tackle another whodunit from the labyrinth of Annie’s attic.