The Dress Shop on King Street
Ashley Clark
Top 10 Best Quotes
“Buttons may be tiny. Delicate, even. But they fasten together the fabric of an entire garment. The fabric wear day in and day out, the mundane cotton blouse and the lacy wedding dress. The fabric, the seams, that cover us, warm us, protect us. Binding dream to dream, story to story, but mostly, death to life. With a particular kind of beauty that rises from the dust. The resurrection life of a second story, of the breath that mends us.”
“The slightest sea breeze clung to the air as Peter and Harper walked the pathway along Charleston Harbor. A few dolphins played in the not-so-distant waves, and sunlight fell like glitter in shades of orange and pink against the water. And this---this---was Charleston. All they needed was a front porch painted haint blue and a proverbial glass of sweet tea.”
“The blush peach, silk dress was layered with cream lace over the bodice and hemline. Most arresting was the stunning cape that Harper imagined to be from the 1940's. They just didn't make dresses like that anymore. Actually, they didn't make dresses like it back then, either. It was exquisite. One of a kind.”
“She loved Franklin as the color of wildflowers on a summer's day. She may be Red, but he was all the others and she would see him every time she saw the blending blur of brightly colored petals waving in the breeze.”
“Inside the shop, a blond woman reached for a peach silk number on display. What Millie would give to go inside the store and let her own fingers graze the fabric of that gown. Layers of peach silk draped down the back of the dress, then fell into a line of buttons along the fitted waistline and hips. The whole gown was like a summer dream.”
“The next morning, a group of ladies with large beaded earrings and grey hair curled from here to high heaven clustered around a kitchen table lined with green Depression glass. They had a saying around here. The higher the hair, the closer to God. And if that were true, well, the women of the Holy City would be a shoe-in when it came time for the rapture.”
“She breathed in the sweet air deeply. Gardenias, if she wasn't mistaken. She once had a gardenia bush back at home, and sometimes when it was blooming, she'd crack open her bedroom window to get whiffs of the smell all night, then wake up sweaty because gardenias always bloomed in May, except every so often, when a deep-summer flower would bloom well past its season.”
“Millie had moxie. Franklin had seen enough of life to recognize it. A woman traveling by herself across the States? He had to respect her.”
“Life didn't come until Ezekiel spoke to the breath." "What does that mean?" Harper hesitated. She had the strangest sensation of breathlessness, like after a long hike into high altitude just before cresting a mountain. "Well, it's resurrection. From the ashes. From the dust. From the dead things. Your problem is, you're looking at the bones instead of breathing." Daddy sighed. "Maybe your dream was never about a shop at all. Maybe there's a second command, Harper Girl. Another place where you're supposed to breathe life." Harper looked down to the blouse in her lap. To the thread and the needle. She thought of Millie's buttons. And then hope---glorious and beautiful hope---filled the landscape of her heart as the sunrise scatters new light over the mountaintops. Of course! Why hadn't she seen it before? All this time, she had been focused on the store. But her gifting, her dream, was so much more than that. Her gifting was repairing the broken places. Mending forgotten tears and weak seams. Breathing life back into the fabrics that told stories, into the buttons that bind them.”
“How could he do that to his own family?" Daddy seemed to sense there was more to Harper's empathy. He reached across the table and gave her hand a big squeeze. "Don't know. Some folks aren't worth their weight in salt if you ask me." Daddy glanced over his shoulder toward the boy on the pier. Harper pulled a claw off her crab and used it to point toward the other pier. She'd never even met the stepfather and was ready to throw the crab claw right in his face. "Sweetheart." It was a your-compassion-is-acting-up-again warning, not an admonishment. Harper blinked, forcing herself back to the present. "You're right. This dinner is a celebration, after all. You caught enough this morning to feed the whole county." She smiled at Daddy, proud of how hard he worked, then looked back down at the crab and slowly broke off the other claw. She hesitated when it made an unexpected pop. "You're thinking about that crab getting caught, aren't you?" Harper set the food back down on her plate and let her laughter go free. "How did you know?" Daddy grinned. "That's my girl. Always considering the oxygen-deprived crustaceans.”
Except where otherwise noted, all rights reserved to the author(s) of this book (mentioned above). The content of this page serves solely as promotional material for the aforementioned book. If you enjoyed these quotes, you can support the author(s) by acquiring the full book from Amazon.
Book Keywords:
flower, realization, buttons, empathetic, colors-of-love, moxie, historical, understanding-others, charleston, dress, father, close-to-god, vintage, hope, higher, gardenia, cape, to-heaven, connections, south-carolina, sunset, rarity, peach-color, strong-woman, resurrect
