A Tapestry of Light by Kimberly Duffy

A Tapestry of Light by Kimberly Duffy
Series: Stand Alone Title
Publisher: Bethany House Publishers (March 16, 2021)

Book Review by Kelly Goshorn

I was completely enchanted by A Tapestry of Light. Duffy does an excellent job bringing the sights and sounds of colonial India to life. Through crowded streets, lush gardens, and the scent of Indian spices, I was transported to another world. Beautifully woven with a sprinkle of Hindi words and customs, we see 19th century India through Duffy’s heroine, Ottilie Russell, a young woman of Eurasian (Indian & British) descent.

Ottilie is carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. As her story begins, she is swept up in a tragedy that brings the vivid memories of losing her father and two sisters to cholera years earlier. Ottilie relies on her talent to embroider with iridescent beetle wings to support her family. Apparently this was a fashion craze in the 1800s and I’d never heard of it, so I looked it up.

As you can see, it’s just lovely. I would’ve never guessed those were the casings for beetle wings, would you?

Ottilie is guarded and fiercely protective of her only two remaining family members, her younger bother, Thaddeus, and her grandmother. In this moment, she questions her faith. While this may shy some readers away, I urge you to read on. Who hasn’t suffered in this world? Who hasn’t wondered where God is when the circumstances of their life overwhelm them?

Just like in her debut, A Mosaic of Wings, Duffy has once again created characters that leapt off the page into my heart. The story is told through Ottilie’s perspective, yet the entire cast of secondary characters were well thought out and developed. They were my friends and I was sorry to part with them when the story ended. Even the antagonists recognized their flawed thinking and sought forgiveness by novel’s end.

But it was Everett Scott, Ottilie’s friend and eventual romantic interest, that took my heart by storm. Everett is a kind, honorable man, with a strong faith, who never looks down on Ottilie because she is of Eurasian heritage. As feelings grow between them, Everett is torn between the woman he loves and the responsibility he feels to carry on his father’s business and make him proud, thus redeeming himself from the sordid details of his own ancestry. But in order to do that, he needs a proper British wife, the kind that can open the right doors for him. Despite the fact I wanted to shake him at times for putting societal expectations above his growing feelings for Ottilie, this flaw only made him more realistic, not only as a man of his era, but as a human being who needed to grow and stretch. Seeing Everett open his heart to God, to allow God to prune him, and him being willing to let go of what he thought he’d always wanted, made Everett’s journey all the more satisfying.

“Yet as we learn, we grow, and as we grow, our tapestries become works through which God can shine His light.”

A Tapestry of Light, by Kimberly Duffy

And Duffy doesn’t shy away from tough topics like prejudice and racism. Although both Ottilie and Thaddeus are Eurasian, Duffy shows the disparity between the way people treated Ottilie because she looked Indian where as Thaddeus looked British. Ottilie never felt fully accepted by either culture in India, but when she arrived in Britain, she felt alone and alienated in her own home, while her brother was touted as the next heir of Hazelbrook Manor.

Ottilie’s search for belonging, to be accepted for who she was, not what she appeared to be, is the central theme of the novel and one I find especially relevant for today’s historical fiction reader. For all these reasons, I give A Tapestry of Light five phenomenal fish.

I listened to A Tapestry of Light on Audiobook. I highly recommend this version. The narrartor, Sneha Mathan, did an excellent job bringing the characters and plot to life.