View the Sewing Holes video book trailer.

Order Sewing Holes from Twisted Road Publications.

Find book club discussion topics here.

Watch the Author Learning Center interview about How Personal Experiences Influenced Sewing Holes here.

 

Here’s what people are saying about Sewing Holes by Darlyn Finch Kuhn:

 

“With infinite grace, Sewing Holes explores love and loss, spirituality and crisis, redemption and forgiveness. Honey is a mesmerizing character who tells her story with such plucky, clear-eyed, no-nonsense wisdom that you never want the novel to end. Darlyn Finch Kuhn has written one fine, uplifting debut novel. Read it, celebrate it, and buy copies for your friends, for this is a book that reminds us what the true nature of love is all about.

~Connie May Fowler

Author of Before Women had Wings and How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly

 

“In her debut novel Sewing Holes, Darlyn Finch Kuhn has written an authentic and touching account of growing up in the 1970s that ties life in Jacksonville, Florida, to the national traumas of that era. Despite her tempestuous home environment, young Honey strives to reach adulthood with her honest heart and loving spirit intact. It’s a generous tale of maturation that all young girls and their mothers and fathers should read. Sewing Holes helped me to a greater understanding of my own childhood and youth.”

~Sena Jeter Naslund

Author of Ahab’s Wife, Four Spirits, Abundance, and The Fountain of St. James Court, or, Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman

 

“In the tradition of Carson McCullers and Rick Bragg, Darlyn Finch Kuhn writes with an acute sense of romanticism, confusion and heartache that is childhood and family life in the American South.  Her flair for detail helps the reader understand why it is such a definitive place.”

~ Bob Kealing

Author of Calling Me Home; Tupperware, Unsealed; and Kerouac in Florida

 

With alternating doses of heartbreak and humor, Darlyn Finch Kuhn’s debut coming-of-age novel, Sewing Holes, is a Southern charmer.  Set in the 70s, the novel tells the tale of spunky Tupelo “Honey” Lee as she learns about love, loss, family, and compassion. Grab your coffee and find a comfortable chair, because Sewing Holes will suck you in and keep you reading to the last line.

~Julie Compton

Author of Tell No Lies, Keep No Secrets, and Rescuing Olivia

 

“Darlyn Finch Kuhn’s Tupelo Honey Lee tells readers she is not sweet enough for her name. Perhaps, but Sewing Holes, told through the youthful voice of a tart-mouthed narrator too head-strong to hold back her thoughts from reaching her mouth, is a delicious treat. Readers will be pleased Honey ‘lacked the common sense to keep my big mouth shut’ and, instead, lets her bitter-sweet childhood memories sew all those holes together.

~Jim Robison

An unintentionally non-profit author of 11 Florida history books, including Flashbacks: the Story of Central Florida’s Past.

 

“Bless Kuhn’s heart for writing Sewing Holes. This book remind us that we spend our lives sewing up the holes in our family’s history, and how love is the stitching. The Southern protagonist graciously invites us into a world brimming with universal wisdom, such as ‘I think our lives are what they are because of the choices we make.’ Very compelling. I read it in one sitting.”

~ Diana Raab, Ph.D.

Author of Lust

 

“Darlyn Finch Kuhn has written a modern Southern Gothic novel set in Jacksonville in the 1970s that keeps the reader captivated from beginning to end with characters that ring true and a story that transcends time.”

~ Jeff Kunerth 

Author of Trout: A True Story of Murder, Teens, and the Death Penalty

 

“Dadgummit – I wasn’t sure what ‘holes’ we were ‘sewing’ at first, but by the end I was bawling like a baby. Darlyn, true to her adorable southern name, has spun a yarn that caught my heart like a mullet in a cast net. Sewing Holes has that southern way of turning tragedy into story … into love.

~ Stacy Barton

Author of Surviving Nashville: Short Stories and Like Summer Grass

 

“In her debut novel, Darlyn Finch Kuhn spins a tale of loss and gain, confusion and clarity, trauma and relief, all in the context of the languid South of the 70s and 80s. It is a place and a time about which Finch Kuhn writes with perfect pitch. Honey, the main character, describes herself as “not sweet enough for my name,” an apt description of a young girl grappling with complex family relationships, death, and desertion. With guts and intelligence Honey navigates this difficult terrain to emerge a wiser young woman. Darlyn Finch Kuhn’s focus is unflinching yet circumspect, like so many aspects of Southern culture. Sewing Holes weaves in and out of family secrets with surprising twists of insight that make the book well worth the read.”

~  Janet and Geoff Benge

Authors of Louis Zamperini: Redemption and the Heroes of History series

 

“As someone who grew up in the Bible belt, I’m often amused by how writers depict religion in the South. Sewing Holes is about as accurate as a novel can be in showing how a deeply religious Southern girl thinks and feels. With great tenderness, it shows that the fabric of life is stitched together with love, heartache, memory and forgiveness.   A good novel polishes the mirror of a reader’s self-awareness. This is a really good novel.”

~ Sandi Hutcheson

Author of Looks Great Naked and I AM LOVED at Community Bible Church

 

“In Sewing Holes, Darlyn Finch Kuhn presents a Southern girl’s experiences with family, friends, and faith in an intimate little story with universal appeal. Eloquently expressed, yet easily accessible, this touching coming-of-age masterpiece speaks to the emotional artist within each of us, weaving pieces of our past into something beautiful for the future.”

~ Leslie C. Halpern

Author of Passionate About Their Work, Reel Romance, and Dreams on Film

 

“Sewing Holes is a smart, compassionate story of a southern family in a turbulent time.  The young narrator’s authentic southern voice, reminiscent of Will Tweedy in “Cold Sassy Tree,” pulls the reader along a compelling journey of love, loss and redemption.”

~ Pat Spears

Author of Dream Chaser

 

“Sewing Holes is a heartrending exploration of how we mend the tears left by absent loved ones, a story deepened and steadied by an accomplished writer who knows that humor provides poignant relief from the wreckage of human passions. We laugh with Darlyn Finch Kuhn at human foibles while recovering from the truths she shows us, about how we are capable of both the deepest betrayal and the most exalted love.”

~ Glenda Bailey-Mershon

Author of Eve’s Garden

 

“Sewing Holes is a delightful debut novel that hits all the emotions. Highly recommended.”

~ Terry Odell

Author of the Blackthorne, Inc. and Pine Hills Police novels

 

 

“Memories are colored by perception, and the truth is pocked with holes. This is the way, after almost half a Century, I’ve stitched those holes together.”

~ Darlyn Finch Kuhn, from (and about) her award-winning debut novel, Sewing Holes, released by Twisted Road Publications on March 23, 2015.

 

Book launch party was held at 7 p.m. on Saturday, March 28, 2015 at the Jack Kerouac House.