Quilter Hadley Carroll thinks her life can't get any worse after being demoted from reporter to newspaper courier and having her fiancé, Matt Ackerman, dump her without explanation. But then, while chucking a sack of newspapers into the Ohio River in Paducah, Kentucky—known as Quilt City—she finds Matt's body snagged under the transient dock. She knows she'll never find peace if she doesn't figure out why he left her and who killed him, so she gets to work.
But the mystery deepens when fellow quilters succumb to foul play, so Hadley must use her investigative skills and impressive intellect to connect a series of seemingly unrelated crimes.
As QuiltWeek Paducah, the largest quilting event in the world, approaches, then fills the small town with 30,000 textile connoisseurs, Paducah's mayor tries to instill calm as citizens panic, protests flair up, and visiting quilters flee by the thousands.
Despite grieving the loss of Matt, Hadley perseveres, strengthened by her troubled upbringing and aided by her weekly quilting group. She resolutely determines to solve the murders, to bring peace back to her hometown, and to get a good night's sleep—finally.
