Dust Between the Stitches

Dust Between the Stitches
206 Pages
ISBN ISBN-10 1536865346 ISBN-13 978-1536865349

Vibrant Addy Meyer wants nothing more than to teach children in the one room school near her grandpa's beet farm in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. But the 1930's swirl with complications for this first-year teacher in rural Colorado. Between the Black Blizzards, the Board of Education and bank president, she is overwhelmed. Addy falls in love with the orphans her grandfather adopted, and with her own students, but vows to guard her heart against the handsome drag line operator, Jess, with his suspicious past. Using her late grandmother's patterns, Addy creates a quilt made from remnants and acquired swatches of feed sacks. As the economy and impending foreclosure combine to destroy Addy and her grandfather's futures, how can these scrapped lives ever be stitched into something coherent? From hurting and gritty people, Addy finds help and justice for her family. Despair, dust and drought weave together with community to create the fabric of the Dust Bowl with muted earth tones punctuated by vivid threads of hope.

Cleo Lampos

About Cleo Lampos (Chicago, Illinois Author)

Cleo Lampos

Cleo Lampos holds a degree in Special Education and has taught regular education and well as special needs students for 26 years. Born and raised until the age of seven on the cusp of the Dust Bowl in Greeley, Colorado, Lampos lived in Iowa and Wisconsin before making her home in the Chicago area with her husband and three children.

Over the years, Lampos has been published in dozens of magazines including Lookout, Teachers in Focus, Today's Child and others. She has published a series of urban teacher novels for inspired readers, called The Teachers of Diamond Project Schools. Her book, Rescuing Children, relates eight historical figures who spent their lives caring for youngsters in danger. A Mother's Song is historical fiction based on the orphan trains. Grandpa's Remembering Book is a family friendly book about Alzheimer's. A devotional, Teaching Diamonds in the Tough is based on Lampos' experiences in education. It has been a joy for Lampos to speak to book clubs, libraries and senior groups in the local colleges. She and her husband participate in the Oak Lawn Community Garden as volunteers in the pantry garden that grows produce for eight food pantries in the area. Lampos also participates in a Stitchers group for quilting.