Review: A Promise Stitched in Time

A Promise Stitched in Time by Colleen Kosinski
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

A Promise Stitched in Time is a novella with an interesting premise and a disappointing execution. Dedicated to the memory of two women seamstresses held prisoners at Auschwitz, the book involves Maggie McConnell, who recently lost her father, and her quest to find a suitable subject for a painting that could earn her a summer art academy scholarship. She searches in thrift shops for items to paint and walks away with an old coat that has memories (and more) imbued in it. My problem with the book lies with a painfully real series of events in human history (Shoah, the Holocaust) being convolved with pseudoscience like astrology and theories like reincarnation. There's already enough Holocaust denial out there. Do we really want to juxtapose these two unprovable/pseudoscience-y things with something history tells us is fact? While it's evident that the author's intent was positive, the convolving of the real with unreal just felt poorly conceived. I think this book was a missed opportunity. I felt there should have been ways to tell Maggie and Gittel's story better, more realistically and more authentically. Just having Maggie solve the mystery of the coat and having Gittel explain the story of it and retrieve the personal item in it could have been a magnificent story about a young person building a relationship and learning history from an elderly Holocaust survivor. Maggie could have painted Gittel's memories in that context.

I received a Digital Review Copy of this book from NetGalley and Schiffer Publishing in exchange for an honest review.

View all my reviews