The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Edwards, Shaunna J. and Richman, Alyson. The Thread Collectors. Graydon House, 2022.

The Thread Collectors by Shaunna J. Edwards and Alyson Richman is a historical fiction novel set in the South during the Civil War. It primarily centers around two couples. The first couple is Black, and the man, William, is enslaved by a man, and William’s female partner is Stella. She is essentially the concubine of Frye. William and Stella cannot get married because they are enslaved. The second couple is a white couple from New York. Jacob Kling is a musician in the Union army. His wife is the wealthy Lily Kling. She spends her time during the war fighting for abolition and later for women’s rights.

When the novel starts, William escapes from slavery to join up with the Union army. Stella gleans some insider information from Frye who has significant authority with the Confederates, and she uses what information he lets skip to embroider men escaping slavery maps that show them the safest way to the Union soldiers. Stella is half Black and half white. She stays back in the cottage Frye has purchased for her to live in. Her sister Ammanee is a Black slave woman, and the women’s mother, Janie, convinces Percy, the man she once was enslaved to but eventually was freed from, to place Ammanee as Stella’s maid servant, so the two sisters live together. Janie lives nearby. After William leaves, Stella realizes she is pregnant, but she does not know if the baby is Frye’s or William’s.

The narrative weaves between that of Lily, Jacob, Stella, and William. William meets Jacob when he gets to Camp Parapet in Louisiana. Jacob is helping a medical surgeon as the surgeon examines the Black recruits to see if they are fit for duty. Jacob realizes that William is a musician and he encourages William to report himself as a fife player.

Jacob and William become friends as they both share their music. They also befriend a young drummer boy named Teddy who is approximately nine or ten years old. William becomes a father figure to Teddy. When Christmas comes, William, Jacob, and Teddy go out into the forest to get a Christmas tree for Teddy. Teddy is shot by someone in the woods, and Jacob severely injures his leg. William gives Teddy a proper burial, and he is able to get Jacob into a cabin in the woods inhabited by a woman who hates Black people and thinks that Jacob is her lost son. When Jacob gets a fever, William tries to go into town to get a powder to treat him, but he is attacked by some drunken white men and is left for dead. After unsuccessfully trying to explain to Union army members who he is, he eventually leaves and makes it back to Stella and Wade, their son. Frye is already dead after having been murdered by Stella and Ammanee when Frye says he will sell Wade since the boy is not his son.

Lily gets worried in New York because she has not heard from Jacob in weeks. She travels to Mississippi to the home of Samuel’s brother, who she learns when she arrives has lost his leg fighting for the Confederacy. Eliza, Samuel’s wife, detests the Union army, but at Samuel’s insistence, she drives Lily around the hospitals to try to find Jacob. Just when she is about to give up because she has nowhere else to search, she hears someone singing the song Jacob wrote for her. This man leads her to William who is able to give her a map to where he left Jacob.

Lily goes to Jacob and they leave together, ending up at the home of Stella and William. Jacob tells William that his father-in-law can probably get William a job in New York. Meanwhile, Ammanee has caught a fever from working at the contraband camp where escaped slaves find refuge. Stella wants Ammanee and her love, Benjamin, to come with them to New York, but Ammanee dies before this can happen. As the novel ends, Jacob, Lily, Stella, William, and Wade head to New York.

Key themes and motifs include color, blankets, disillusionment, the gradients of suffering, and sacrifice.