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On the edge of North Carolina's hill country in the 1920s, the magnificent Biltmore estate employs dozens of impoverished, orphaned teenagers and teaches them artisanal trades. The goods they produce have built the Vanderbilt name and fortune, but as industrial manufacturing replaces handcrafted goods, that fortune is beginning to wane. Weaver Lorna Blankenship promises a unique design for Cornelia Vanderbilt's wedding, but everything she produces falls flat. As she goes in search of a mysterious, almost mythical weaver to save her job and the Biltmore company, Lorna remembers a young upstart named Gentry, whom she tried to mentor, and a romance that never quite got off the ground with woodworker Arthur Westcott. The Gilded Age finds Appalachia as Lorna struggles to reconcile her past choices, especially those regarding the apprentice Gentry, with the dreams she has hidden in her heart. VERDICT Thomas (The Finder of Forgotten Things) excels at taking a little-known slice of history and bringing it to life, similar to authors Elizabeth Camden and Laura Frantz.

Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

In her latest novel, Thomas once again proves herself to be an exemplar of literary loveliness. Weaver Lorna Blankenship of the prestigious Vanderbilt hand-weaving business is meticulous, hardworking, and a total fraud. After years of passing off a former protégé’s designs as her own, the company and her job are in jeopardy when a prominent commission demands the ingenuity that has always eluded Lorna. In an effort to conceal her shame and her secret, Lorna goes in search of a mysterious weaver who could be the answer to her troubles. But finding the weaver will mean unraveling years of lies threaded throughout Lorna’s identity and stitching a new measure of her worth. These Tangled Threads is an uplifting story that explores themes of creativity and control and the complexity of forgiveness. Set in Biltmore Village, Asheville, North Carolina, at the turn of the twentieth century, the novel features a nonlinear narrative and incorporates beautifully detailed descriptions of hand-weaving and woodworking. The desperation fueling Lorna’s deceit thoughtfully reflects the cultural pressures felt by artisans as well as the longevity of loss.