In 1876 a woman in a small town in Iowa began stitching an extraordinary quilt, one that accurately depicted the sun, stars, and all the known planets in our solar system. Ellen Harding baker, a storekeeper's wife and a mother, had a curiosity that reached far beyond the stratosphere, and she explored it with fabric and thread.

Today the quilt hangs in the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, a testament to Ellen's beautiful handiwork and her ingenuity.

This lyrical story imagines the creation of the quilt from the perspective of Ellen's daughters, who, like their mother, lived in a time when girls and women were expected to limit their pursuit of knowledge, and who may have been inspired to dream bigger and look farther.

From the dust jacket