Kindle Edition Amazon Anne's website Anne's Website Buy at Amazon Category:  Literary Fiction Publisher: Ring of Fire Publishing ISBN-10:  0615821340 Type: Fiction Pages: 352 Copyright: June 18, 2013 ISBN-13: 9780615821344 Price: $13.49 (eBook) The novels showcase different aspects of Anne Hendren’s creative approach: High fashion and high aspirations combust inProject Runaway against a backdrop of professional backstabbing on New York’s garment district.”… everything and every act are by done "by design" -- even acts of betrayal.” Set in New York and the Rocky Mountain west, Project Runaway wraps suicide and fraud inside the opulent intrigue of fashion and design in New York. Fashion designer Karin Ohlsson moves to the U.S. capital of fashion in 2004 to design clothes. She escapes but cannot quell a recurring dream—death and headstones. In New York she learns that original design does not exist and decides to run away. Like indentured servants before her, who followed star quilts and quilt patterns she uses the knowledge of sewing to escape. Her ailing aunt, quilting circle and a preservation architect encourage her runaway dream, a eponymous line in the Northwest. When the western studio fails because of deception and death Karin returns to New York to design and to realize her aunt’s dying wish.

An Insider's View to the Cutthroat World of the Fashion Industry: Review from Leigh:
Though the New York and Idaho settings are worlds away from the sweatshops of Asia, Ms. Hendren gives us an insider's view of what it's like to work in the fashion industry: the pressures, the jealousies, the disappointments. I adored the characters, each burdened with conflicts in career and battles of the heart. How Lois Wyse enlightened us to advertising agencies with her novel, "The Rosemary Touch," so does Anne Hendren for the fashion industry with "Project Runaway." A must read!

Designing to Run - Review from K. Boyer:
Ms. Hendren writes with studious care about the fashion world; its ins and outs, the tension and creative theft between the established conniving designer and the ingenue designer with the new ideas. The wonderfully described scenes carry you forward from New York City to Idaho, through the maze of sewers, designers and friends. Very descriptive dress details that make you want to start your own line if you are a fashionista!

The Seam Rippers Arrive - Review from K. Gilligan:
Project Runaway was a pure delight and a tribute to all of us who spend our lives stitching and drawing dresses to make other women beautiful. I would love to see a whole series (I see a new genre! Move over bodice ripper- make way for the seam rippers!) around these young entrepreneurs, the sewing arcana and fashion world.

I waxed nostalgic on the return to New York's garment district. Who knew it would be gone one day- how could anyone? It seemed so permanent- I treasured every moment that I trod there and it was fun to see it immortalized in Runaway's text. I identified with the young designer- as will anyone who loves to sew- suffered her setbacks and triumphed right along with her.

The important takeaway from this novel is that there is a lifetime's worth of things to turn up just in the craft of sewing and that special relationship we all have with how we express ourselves with our culture's "traditional dress" as has been expressed by all human cultures. We certainly are not the only ones who spend so much time and invest so much heart in it. It's just intrinsically human.