Unbroken Threads

When 73-year-old forensic textile analyst Eleanor Willowbee attends a Historical Society tea to view a newly acquired antique sampler, she notices something that doesn't belong: an 18th-century brass button displayed alongside the 19th-century needlework. Hours later, the historian who organized the event is found dead. What appears to be a natural death becomes something far more sinister when Eleanor discovers the sampler contains an encoded testimony to genocide. Created in 1847 by an 11-year-old girl named Catherine Hendricks, the needlework documents a massacre she witnessed—seven Indigenous people murdered by British soldiers paid by Powell River's founding families to "clear" land for settlement. For 177 years, Catherine's testimony sat unread, her truth buried in silk and linen. Dr. Patricia Moorhouse spent three years decoding it. And for that, she was poisoned. Now Eleanor and Patricia's sister Marion must finish what Patricia started. But the same families who committed genocide in 1847 are still killing to protect their blood-stained inheritance. Eleanor's cottage is ransacked. She receives death threats. Her communications are intercepted. And when she finally cracks Catherine's code, revealing the full horror of what happened, she and Marion become the next targets. As Eleanor digs deeper, she uncovers connections to her own past. Twenty years ago, her husband Robert was murdered while investigating corruption—the same corruption, the same families, the same willingness to kill for profit. His case was never solved. Until now. With the help of Rose Tla'amin, an Indigenous elder whose ancestors were among the seven murdered, Eleanor exposes a conspiracy spanning generations. But truth has consequences. Property owners whose wealth derives from stolen land fight back. Arson. Assault. Terrorism designed to suppress Indigenous land claims and silence anyone who threatens comfortable lies. Eleanor must testify in court, decode centuries-old evidence, and literally pull a gun to survive. She's 73 years old, armed with a revolver and forty years of forensic expertise, refusing to let another murder go unpunished. UNBROKEN THREADS is a crime thriller about the power of witness, the persistence of truth, and the courage required to speak uncomfortable realities. It weaves together historical mystery and modern investigation, showing how violence echoes across generations and how even the smallest voice—an 11-year-old girl's needlework—can eventually demand justice. This is a story about women who refuse to be silenced: Catherine, preserving testimony when speaking was too dangerous. Patricia, researching truth that cost her life. Rose, pursuing land claims despite terrorism. And Eleanor, an elderly widow who chooses justice over safety, truth over comfort, and moral clarity over social acceptance. In the tradition of KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON and THE ALIENIST, UNBROKEN THREADS combines meticulous historical research with propulsive crime fiction, exploring how communities reckon with ancestral violence and whether accountability is possible across centuries

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