Covered Buttons

In the foothills of the Ozarks, seventeen-year-old Thea is stitched into a life she never chose. After losing her mother and best friend, and with no path forward beyond marriage and motherhood, Thea finds unexpected kinship in her unconventional stepmother and her infamous grandmother. Between a world of books and embroidery, secrets stitched in buttons, and the quiet defiance of women's care networks, Thea begins to imagine a life beyond her small Arkansas town. But when a violent betrayal shatters the illusion of love and tragedy strikes where a new family and a reunited friendship had just begun to grow, Thea must choose: remain bound by the threads of grief or step into a future of her own making. Set in 1939 and inspired by the grassroots birth control movement in Arkansas, COVERED BUTTONS is a story of friendship, resistance, and the quiet revolution of women who dare to dream differently.

Arkansas native Stephanie Saunders is associate professor of Spanish and director of the Honors Fellows Program at Lyon College. Author of FASHION, GENDER, AND AGENCY IN LATIN AMERICAN AND SPANISH LITERATURE, she is also coeditor of THE NEW LATIN AMERICAN FASHION READER.