Calico Brides by Darlene Franklin

4 stars
Calico Brides is a collection of stories about the Calico sewing circle women. The younger women of the circle want to do missionary work closer to home. They each take a cause they can work on throughout the year. Through their local mission they find husbands along the way.
I came to care about all the different characters of Calico. It also makes me want to help more and in different ways. These are good clean reads. Each story can stand alone but better read together.

A Birthday Wish
Gladys Polson decides she is going to help Mr. Keller. He is all alone with his money and hardly leaves his house. Since his wife died. His son has moved away and never comes to visit. Her first thing is to decorate his house with baskets of greenery and bows by every window so he sees them when ever he looks out.
While she is on a ladder hanging the first one the door opens and knocks her ladder but she is caught. Haydn is visiting his grandfather. He does not want anyone to know of his relationship to him so he tells everyone he is visiting for business reasons.
Mr. Keller is grouchy does not want anyone's help. He tells his grandson that if he marries within two months while he is here he will pay to start a newspaper for Calico with him running it. Haydn is not willing to marry just anyone and on schedule.
They both wonder at Gladys reason for visiting and being nice to Mr. Keller.

Miss Bliss and the Bear
Annie Bliss has the idea to knit mittens, scarfs and socks for all the soldiers at the nearby fort. She thinks of her brother who is serving else ways.
Fort Chaplain Jeremiah tells all the soldiers to stay away from woman who bring trouble in his sermons. He does not want Annie to come back to the fort. So he gets to go to her house to talk about the project.
It goes over so well that The Captain's wife wants to get the lonely soldiers to social more with the town.
This in away is something we can do for are soldiers who are serving today or even those who are wounded in VA hospitals. Maybe not knit socks but something like that.

Buttons for Birdie

Birdie Landry is a former saloon girl and now Christian. She is trying to make her living from sewing and from chickens eggs. She needs to do it on her own. Birdie also wants to help other girls who are stuck working at the saloon. They need respectable dresses before they can leave and help finding a job.

Ned owns the store and is willing to buy her eggs for more than he can sell them. He wants to help her but she won't buy on credit. Ned tries to be her friend.

Birdie wants so bad to help her friends but won't let others help her help them. Finally she finds ways to help and let others help too.

A Blessing for Beau
Beau is a cowboy who's sister and brother-in-law died in a house fire everything they owned went to. He has come to raise his niece and nephews. The community has come to help to build a soddy house for them to live in. Plus some food for them to get to winter.
Beau has a lot of pride and not much money he does not want to accept others help in raising his new family especially the school teacher Ruth.

Ruth feels her mission project are the three orphan Pratt children. She knows all their clothes have burned up and she wants to make them clothes.
When Beau wants to keep the boys out of school she desperately wants him to let them keep learning. She wants to help more.

I was given this ebook and asked to give honest review of it when finished.
June 1st 2013 by Barbour Books 352 pages ISBN:1616267461

Description below taken off of Goodreads.


Determined to sow good deeds into the lives of needy people, the four youngest members of the 1876 Calico, Kansas, sewing circle reap romance. Gladys Polson, designing to aid a crotchety widower, falls for a stranger. Annie Bliss, knitting for soldiers, has a fort chaplain on pins and needles. Birdy Landry, sewing dresses for saloon girls looking for a new life, has her feathers ruffled by a beneficent shopkeeper. Schoolteacher Ruth Fairfield is about to teach a new guardian a few lessons in life and love. Will God stitch forever-after romances into the lives of these four women?