The Goodbye Quilt

Linda Davis is driving her daughter Molly across the country to start college, and she is torn between excitement for Molly and heartache for herself. Linda gave up her own dream of college when she married and had Molly, and over the years she settled on quilting as her craft.

On the road she works on a quilt stitched from scraps of Molly's young life, including the hem of a christening gown and snippets of old costumes. The pieces become an inventory of everything she is handing over.

Susan Wiggs's short novel, well under two hundred pages, is about the empty nest from the mother's side: the challenge of letting go, and the uncertainty of the life waiting for Linda when she drives home alone.