Happy birthday, Tempest's Course!

December 17, 2013 is here at last! I've been looking forward to this date for two years.

Two years ago this month I had the chance to travel to New Bedford, Massachusetts and spend a day researching for Tempest's Course. I visited the New Bedford Whaling National Historic Park and dove into the city's past.

The front parlor of the Rotch-Jones-Duff house

New Bedford was once dubbed "the city that lit the world" and was the hub of New England's whaling trade. Because the 1850s were really where the story of Tempest's Course began, I needed to walk through the city's history. The part of me who's a history buff strolled the cobblestoned streets, and saw the Seaman's Bethel where Herman Melville attended services.

However, New Bedford wasn't my first choice of a setting for Tempest's Course. A very long stone's throw across the harbor lies the smaller town of Fairhaven.

Doesn't that have a nice ring to it? "Fairhaven."

However, Fairhaven didn't have the draw that New Bedford did for me, and for Tempest's Course.

Despite its warm-sounding name, the town lost out on the setting when I began delving more into the history of the quilt and Mary Gray.

Poor, poor Mary. The seamstress of the Mariner's Compass quilt in Tempest's Course made some decisions that, like ripples on a pond, turned into waves that affected the present.

About Tempest's Course: 
Kelly Frost, a textiles conservator, is invited to the Massachusetts coastal city of New Bedford to restore an over 150-year-old Mariner's Compass quilt. But there is one stipulation: she must live and work in Gray House, a former whaling captain's home, where the quilt is stored. There she meets Army veteran Tom Pereira, the caretaker of Gray House, whose heart seems as hard as the rocky Massachusetts coastline. Over the long-lit months as Kelly works to restore the quilt, she and Tom grow closer. And as she reads stories in a daily journal penned by Mary Gray, she learns the secrets of the quilt and Mary's own sad tale of regret, as an unseen adversary tries to keep Kelly from learning the biggest secret of all.