Books
The Romance at the Fiber Guild series is up to seven books and counting. These will be released over the next months. Book I is available for sale now. The others will be coming soon, so stay in the loop!
BOOK ONE
Romance at the Fiber Guild I: The Ancestor
College junior Jeff Nietmann prizes how knitting connects him to his European ancestors. Following the advice of his marketing professor, he crashes a meeting of the all-female Flatlands Fiber Guild.
There Jeff meets a professor who views him as a perfect suitor for her daughter. But Jeff’s budding romance with the young blonde is blown out of the water when he meets Laurel Howell, estranged daughter of Guild member Tabitha Howell, the first Black faculty member in Great Plains University’s history department and avid knitter of ornate shawls. Keen to resolve the broken mother-daughter relationship ruining Laurel’s happiness, Jeff leverages his role as Dr. Howell’s student to acquaint her with his girlfriend’s remarkable research on her enslaved ancestors. But the two students are not working alone. Laurel’s four-times great-grandmother, skilled spinner and knitter Hattie Bennett, who rescued her daughter along the Underground Railroad, provides invaluable assistance to Laurel and Jeff, motivating them by her example, and even paying them an unexpected visit…
BOOK two
Romance at the Fiber Guild II: L’enfant terrible
When art professor Astrid Karlsen meets the talented spinning enthusiast, Benjamin Letellier, at her monthly fiber guild meeting, she insists that the Frenchman enroll in her program at Great Plains University.
But when he arrives on campus, she learns he failed a criminal background check. Her daughter’s attraction to the drug-using raver arouses Astrid’s dread. Meanwhile, strange things happen in downtown Prairie Plains, where anonymous crochet muralists transform a burned-out plaza into a vibrant community gathering site. While the miraculous murals prove a potent balm for the grieving mother’s heart, Astrid’s desire to out the anonymous artists is as strong as her determination to wrench Sigrun away from the suitor leading her down the path of perdition.
BOOK three
Romance at the Fiber Guild III: The Way Forward
Picking up the pieces was never easy. Especially when there were so many of them scattered around, the work of Astrid Karlsen’s own making.
All those decisions by her college-aged daughter, Sigrun, that she’d questioned, even rejected, had been right, made not out of senseless rebellion, but from wisdom and love. Astrid saw that now, and she saw with equal clarity that making amends for her maternal mistakes would entail enormous effort. The road ahead was paved with contrition, but also with reward. Embracing Sigrun’s pansexual husband, Benjamin Letellier, for his brilliance as a fiber artist, and his passionate advocacy for the many marginalized friends he involved in making his art, was only a starting point. Following in his footsteps, learning from him, supporting him as he leveraged his ambitious crocheted murals to enhance the life of the community – this became the goal of the art professor as she embarked on a journey of family healing and personal fulfillment.
BOOK FOUR
Romance at the Fiber Guild IV: The Spinning Wheel Maker
Benjamin Letellier purchased the 1890s mansion for a pittance. But the withered edifice proved to hold numerous treasures left behind by the cabinetmaker who’d built it, including three ornate spinning wheels as old as the mansion itself. What had prompted a founding father of Prairie Plains to invest his skills in making these exquisite devices for spinning wool into thread?
Fortunately for the Letelliers, Lemuel Kunz, the maker in question, left copious clues behind, scads of letters and journals written in old German script. As the homeowners embark on a quest to decipher Kunz’s correspondence and learn how romance moved him to become a master maker of spinning wheels, they involve Benjamin’s brother-in-law, young Lars Karlsen, who is on a quest of his own. In an effort to quell the self-doubt inflicted on him by the homophobes who’ve been bullying him, Lars sets out to prove his own worth by replicating Kunz’s feat. With any luck, his father will look past his homosexuality if he succeeds in using Kunz’s own nineteenth-century woodworking shop to build a spinning wheel that is every bit as ornate and functional as those of the master himself.
BOOK FIVE
Romance at the Fiber Guild V: Universal Design
Three fledging students cross paths in a struggling mall in the middle of Prairie Plains: an attractive coed from Chicago who recently became blind, a jilted lover from Norway, dumped after failing to get into music school, and his bodybuilding cousin, who’s made a career of hiding his sexual orientation from his parents.
As Kasper realizes his growing desire for the gorgeous Nicole, his reserved nature proves a hindrance in the face of his American cousin’s affinity for the girl who, like Lars, is a recovering bullying victim. No problem for Nicole—she has not one, but two eager youths helping her adapt to her new, independent existence in Prairie Plains, and the avid knitter soon finds herself sucked into the yarny world of Lars Karlsen, the son of a fiber arts professor who manages a yarn store. What could be more natural than that Nicole should come on board as an employee at his shop? As Lars invokes universal design to integrate his new best friend into his shop, Dee’s Yarn & Fiber Emporium is transformed into a destination experience for fiber lovers, whether they’re able-bodied or not. Keen not to be outcompeted by his cousin for Nicole’s attention, Kasper turns to music to court the alluring object of his affection. And this might even do the trick, were it not for the distraction of Nicole’s troubled younger sister, who responded to her journey into blindness with potent and hurtful displays of rejection. It seems moving forward for Nicole and her friends requires first that they overcome the demons lurking in their past.
BOOK SIX
Romance at the Fiber Guild VI: Knitting While Blind
To say that Dana Bentley reacted badly while her sister was going blind would be an understatement. And now the consequences of the whole miserable nightmare she brought on herself were slamming her in the face.
Expelled from college and facing probation, she has to crawl back to her family in Chicago and beg them for help. And beg her sister for forgiveness. It never occurred to her that the very sister she’d kicked to the curb a short time ago could be her staunchest ally in getting her life back on track as a student at Great Plains University. But Nicole actually needed her, and that need ends up being the answer to Dana’s own prayer for a chance to prove herself—as a daughter, as a sister, as a friend. And perhaps most surprisingly of all, even as a knitter!
BOOK SEVEN
Romance at the Fiber Guild VII: No Room for Grief
After Nicole Bentley is thrust into the role of shop manager at Dee’s Yarn & Fiber Emporium, her frantic search for an employee to assume her previous role ends in the hiring of a mysterious woman on a quest to find her estranged son.
As the mysteries surrounding Vandana Paxton mount up, Nicole responds to her mother’s concerns that she’s overstretching the limits imposed on her by her blindness by lying about her work. More sparks fly as Dana Bentley becomes the sudden object of Simon Balakumar’s attentions, the non-binary accountant employed by the mural workshop where they all crochet for Yarnstormeur. Things come to a head when the Bentley girls’ mother descends on Prairie Plains to check in on them—and finds that they’ve been up to a good deal more besides knitting, crocheting, and studying!