Seven Stitches [Paperback]

Its been a year since the Big Onethe Cascadia subduction zone earthquakedevastated Portland, and while Meryem Zarfatis injuries have healed and her neighborhood is rebuilding, her mother is still missing. Refusing to give up hope, Meryem continues to search for her mother even as she learns to live without her in a changed Portland. After she receives a magical prayer shawl handed down from her maternal grandmother, a mysterious stranger appears, and Meryem is called to save a young girl living in slaveryin sixteenth-century Istanbul. The third companion in the Oregon Book AwardwinningBlue Threadseries explores how we recoverand rebuildafter the worst has happened.

“For me, what stands out aboutSeven Stitchesis the fascinating blend of time travel to the ancient past, combined with the depiction of life forty years in the future. Offhand, I cant think of other novels that share that mix. The modern daily life of Meryem and her friends and family is more recognizable than that in many stories that depict a more remote future. In this book, Feldman seems to have taken many trends we see today and extended them in a logical way, depicting a 2058 that I found very believable. Some details of this envisioned future life are really fun to picture, such as the indoor vertical garden which produced vegetables, and the roasted crickets snack mix! In this story, the time travel to the past is episodic, with Meryem going to Istanbul three times. On these journeys, vivid details about clothing and make the story come alive. At times, I got confused about the lineage/names of people in Istanbul, but I found I could understand the narrative just fine without stopping to sort it out. I liked the Jewish history woven into this history of ancient Turkey. Meryem is a believable main character. She is often depressed and irritable, which is understandable, given that she is suffering from the kind of suspended grieving that one must go through when olÓ