Room of Buttons

Edda keeps offering things she cannot bear to lose.For Edda Weave, an old garment holds far more than its remaining thread. A yellow sleeve recalls her daughter as a child. A small coat carries years of careful work. Each repair seems another reason to keep it whole.Aboard The Seeker, useful material is limited, and Tess cannot master her inherited trade by looking at protected seams. She needs room to open, alter and sometimes spoil what she is given.Edda wants to help. She can find a use for almost any scrap, make an affectionate visit last too long and promise a generous bundle before discovering why one particular piece must stay home. Meanwhile, Tess's work, friendships and desires are becoming a life her grandmother cannot arrange.Across thirty years of marriage, family comedy, grief and changing hands, the collection grows harder to preserve and harder to justify. If Edda is to give Tess something truly useful, she must let her granddaughter decide what it becomes.The Room of Buttons is the fifth novel in The Seeker Inheritance, an intimate story of skilled work, imperfect memory and the things love must allow to change.