Guest Post (and a Giveaway!): Kimberly Duffy & A Tapestry of Light

Welcome to the Blog Tour for A Tapestry of Light by Kimberly Duffy, hosted by JustRead Publicity Tours! I’m delighted to host Kimberly today as she shares about the first book she ever loved!

Title: A Tapestry of Light
Author: Kimberly Duffy
Publisher: Bethany House Publishers
Release date: March 16, 2021
Genre: Christian Historical Romance

Calcutta, 1886.

Ottilie Russell is adrift between two cultures, British and Indian, belonging to both and neither. In order to support her little brother, Thaddeus, and her grandmother, she relies upon her skills in beetle-wing embroidery that have been passed down to her through generations of Indian women.

When a stranger appears with the news that Thaddeus is now Baron Sunderson and must travel to England to take his place as a nobleman, Ottilie is shattered by the secrets that come to light. Despite her growing friendship with Everett Scott, friend to Ottilie’s English grandmother and aunt, she refuses to give up her brother. Then tragedy strikes, and she is forced to make a decision that will take Thaddeus far from death and herself far from home.

But betrayal and loss lurk in England, too, and soon Ottilie must fight to ensure Thaddeus doesn’t forget who he is, as well as find a way to stitch a place for herself in this foreign land.

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The First Book I Loved

by Kimberly Duffy, author of A Tapestry of Light

The very first book I ever loved was The Secret Garden. My brother gave it to me for Christmas the year I turned ten. I still remember sitting in the dining room, running my palm over the shiny dust jacket. Examining the artwork—a little girl in a white dress, pushing through a door set in a wall overgrown with ivy—and recognizing, with a rapid little dance of my heart, that I was about to go on an adventure. It was my first real book. Hardcover and classic and enduring.

I read it every year until I had my oldest child when time began to rush forward in great leaps. And then I read it aloud as soon as my second turned six and was able to fully appreciate its beauty. I’m getting ready to read it to my youngest two because they’re finally willing to sit with me long enough to dig into the story.

I loved everything about that book. The opening scenes of chaos and confusion, set in a world as different from mine as India can be from England. The author’s ability to pull me, completely, into a rambling house on the moor full of dust and ghostly memories. The twists and turns of a story that followed Misselthwaite Manor’s shut up halls and rooms and gardens. The magical realism of nature—it’s beauty and symbolism. The skinny, spoiled, deeply hurt little heroine who finds healing in the most unlikely place. With the most unlikely people. The hope at the end.

The Secret Garden ignited in me a passion for stories and words and spinning tales. I, sometimes subconsciously, hold every book I read and write up to it. Does it capture the imagination? Does it set the reader in a place so completely, they forget they’re sitting on a park bench surrounded by pigeons or on a couch in a tangle of sticky kisses and desperate interruptions and Transformers? Does it leave them wanting more?

I hope I write books like that. I’ve put a little bit of The Secret Garden in A Tapestry of Light. There are gardens—a lovely, historical one when Ottilie is in Calcutta, an orangery full of potted plants and twinkling lights in Wiltshire, and a Victorian greenhouse in London—and moments of grief tempered with joy and a heroine who discovers a place she belongs. There’s an unexpected trip from India to England and all the difficulty that goes along with that. There’s a definite delineation of seasons. There might be a place or two that veers toward 19^th-century style descriptive passages 😉 And there’s hope. Always hope.