Review by Booklist Review
In 1983, historian Chloe Ellefson and her sister, Kari, take a road trip to visit sites dedicated to the life of Laura Ingalls Wilder. They travel with a quilt said to have been owned by Wilder, and they hope to determine which site to donate it to. At their first stop, a man dies, apparently an accident, but as their trip continues, a presenter at the Looking for Laura symposium is murdered, a tour bus is sabotaged, and various Laura artifacts are defaced. Meanwhile, Kari has her own hidden agenda, and Chloe's patrolman boyfriend, back home in Wisconsin, is struggling to deal with the loss of his best friend and to decide whether to buy his family's farm. Chloe and Kari ultimately find themselves trying to solve the murders as they unravel the mystery behind the provenance of Laura's quilt. Fans of Laura Ingalls Wilder will savor the facts on her and her family's lives woven throughout the story, and quilters will also find much to enjoy. Ernst does an exceptional job of sharing the kinds of character details that cozy readers relish.--O'Brien, Sue Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Two sisters take a road trip that will change their lives. Chloe Ellefson, a collections curator at Old World Wisconsin, is a big fan of Laura Ingalls Wilder, so she's thrilled when her elderly neighbor Miss Lila brings her a quilt that may have been owned or even made by Wilder. Miss Lila wants Chloe to decide which of the many museums devoted to Wilder should get the quilt, but then she's killed in a break-in before Chloe can gather much information from her. Although Chloe's not very close to her sister, Kari, who's married to a dairy farmer and has two children, they both have happy childhood memories of the Little House books and the times they pretended to be Laura and her sister Mary. So she asks Kari to go with her to visit all the museum candidates. At their first stop, they're unable to prevent a young man from dying of anaphylaxis. Then Chloe finds herself interfering in a fight between a Wilder-obsessed wife and her controlling husband. The woman leaves her husband behind and joins the group on Alta Allerbee's Laura Land Tours bus. Chloe's dream trip keeps getting worse as she realizes Kari's hiding a secret and at least two of the people tagging along on the tour are violently anti-Wilder. Her struggles to uncover several secrets reveal some surprising things about her heroine. This sixth adventure for Chloe (Tradition of Deceit, 2014, etc.) is a real treat for Little House fans, a fine mystery supplemented by fascinating information on the life and times of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
