Give yourself plenty of time for this book, it's interesting but quite a tome.

I started this book when my husband was dying of cancer, six months after his death I finally finished it in a cafe in France. It's a wonderful book telling the story of a woman and her life it made me cry and smile.thank you

The reality of tracking down a nonpublic figure from the past is amply shown in this book. The author often got tantalizingly close then would fall away to a frustrating dead end. Our subject even crosses paths with Paul Revere’s daughter on the other side of the world, yet we never quite meet Anne herself. Overall, the research and detective work are amazing, fleshing out the story with industrial/commerce and geo-political history, but in the end, the subject, Anne Sykes, remains elusive. Enjoy the book for what it is, an amazing work of research, but know Anne will remain just out of reach. I deducted a star not for the author’s work, but for the unfulfilled promise of fully revealing the main character.

A really interesting book especially if you are interested in fabrics and history

The author does a good job of giving historical context to the fabric swatches.