Nell's Quilt — Susan Terris

Urged at the age of eighteen to marry a man she doesn't want, Nell delays the event by working on a quilt, slowly starving herself, and observing the unhappy lot of many women in turn-of-the century Massachusetts before arriving at a decision to rescue herself from the brink of death and take charge of her life.Yearning to attend college and work for the women's suffrage movement, eighteen-year-old Nell feels trapped by her parents' inability to manage the farm without her and seeks refuge in the creation of a quilt, in a story set at the turn of the century