A New York Times Bestselling Author -- In 1859, a runaway slave and quilter named Joanna traveled the Underground Railroad to Elm Creek Farm -- only to be captured and forcibly returned to Virginia. More than a century later, Master Quilter Sylvia Bergstrom Compson recovers a bundle of letters that Joanna wrote from South Carolina. Reading transports Sylvia into the thick of the Civil War and to Edisto Island in the years afterward, where a group of ex-slaves formed a quilting circle.