Shenandoah Album

Needing time to contemplate her troubled marriage, Tessa MacRae agrees to spend the summer helping her mother and grandmother clean out the family home in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. But the three women have never been close. Helen, the family matriarch, is domineering and sharp-tongued. Nancy, Tessa's mother, appears to be little more than a social climber. And Tessa herself is in turmoil following a family tragedy that has affected them all. Now, with the gift of time, Tessa's eyes are opened, and she begins to see her mother and grandmother for the flawed but courageous women they are. As she restores a vintage wedding-ring quilt pieced by her grandmother and quilted by her mother, the secrets that have shadowed their lives unfold at last. And each woman discovers that sometimes you have to clean house to find the things you thought were lost forever.

Sam Kinkade is finally feeling at home as a minister in rural Toms Brook, Virginia, content with his life and Shenandoah Valley congregation. But his plans to welcome the area's growing Hispanic community are being met with resistance. Fortunately, when the church-run community center is threatened, a stranger named Elisa Martinez walks through his door and Sam realizes he has found a woman capable of building bridges. Elisa isn't looking to make connections. She has come to Tom's Brook to hide. But despite her fears of discovery, she is enchanted by the beautiful work of-and the friendship offered by-the women who invite her to join their quilting circle. And even though she fears the consequences for both of them, she finds herself powerfully drawn to Sam, and to the generations-old love story rooted in the town's past. Will she and Sam repeat the past, or can they find the love and the freedom they seek at last?

In a cave in the Shenandoah National Park, two bodies are discovered, wrapped in the tattered remains of a lover's knot quilt. In Washington, DC, Isaac Taylor inherits a nearly identical quilt from a grandmother whose name he never even knew. After narrowly escaping death, newspaper journalist Kendra Taylor retreats to a cabin nestled in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley to heal and sort out her feelings about her troubled marriage. As she is welcomed into the rural community of Toms Brook, Kendra becomes curious about an heirloom lover's knot quilt, which is another piece of Isaac's unexplored past. The unusual quilt clearly has a story to tell, and Kendra is convinced that helping her husband connect with his roots might help him reconnect with her, as well.

Gayle Fortman has built a good life for herself and her three sons as an innkeeper in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. She has even maintained a cordial relationship with her ex, charismatic broadcast journalist Eric Fortman, covering with the boys for his absences and broken promises. Luckily Travis Allen, her closest neighbor, has been a loving surrogate father to the boys and her own best friend. Then, on the eve of oldest son Jared's graduation, Eric returns, having nearly lost his life in Afghanistan. Worse, he has lost his way and his courage, and needs a place to recover. Gayle realizes this might be the last chance for her sons to establish a real bond with their father, and offers him a summer at the inn and a chance to put things right. Gayle and Eric are all too aware that their onetime love and attraction are still there. But can the pieces of their broken lives be mended, or are they better laid to rest?

With nine years and a turbulent childhood between them, Kendra and Jamie have never been storybook sisters. Now Jamie is offering a gift Kendra has long since given up hoping for, the fondest wish of her heart-a baby. Already raising two young girls on her own, Jamie wants to become a gestational surrogate for Kendra and her husband, Isaac.In addition to this amazing gift of life, Jamie has designed a new house for Kendra and Isaac and is overseeing its construction on Isaac's ancestral property along the Shenandoah River, with the help of Cash Rosslyn. By giving her sister both a home and a family, Jamie hopes to prove to Kendra that she deserves absolution for her past mistakes.But when a medical crisis threatens her health and her promising new relationship with Cash, Jamie learns that the most difficult choice in her life is yet to come.