When Eli McCann finished his debut novel, “Stitched,” his literary agent had a warning for him and his “uniquely Utah” story.
“She said, ‘This is a really sexist, ageist industry, and it is going to be an uphill battle for us,’” McCann recalled.
The reason? His characters were women. They were older. They were Utahns. And they were quilters.
For a year they sent it out to publishers and, McCann said, the feedback was always asking for changes: to rewrite it, to make it about women in their 30s, to add romance, to have it take place somewhere in the South or the East Coast and even to add more men to the story.
“No, that’s not the book I wanted to write,” McCann told them.
McCann believed in the characters he created. They represented what he considers an often forgotten group of Utah cultural contributors.
They were inspired by his own mother’s quilting group, Common Threads.
“I was frustrated by this because I just kept feeling like these women have lives worth examining,” McCann told The Salt Lake Tribune. “I wrote the book as a love letter to my mom and her friends, and the idea that people wanted me to change it to be about somebody else was, it was just so important to me to fight for.”
So he held his ground, no changes. And finally, serendipitously — and McCann acknowledges, perhaps logically — a Utah publisher, Torrey House Press, not only understood his vision but also recognized the value of the story.
McCann, also a social media personality, took to posting videos on TikTok to self-market his book. One day, he made a video about why he decided to write this book. It ended up going viral. And, as he suspected, commenters were interested in the characters of his story.
The same day, McCann said he started getting emails from Hollywood producers who wanted copies of the book and were intrigued by its premise. He said he’s now meeting with directors, actors and producers to explore potential screenplay options.
To research the book, after asking multiple times, McCann was finally permitted to attend his mother’s quilting group, a tough ticket, he noted.
“My entire life I’ve observed my mom and her friends,” McCann said, “and they do feel to me very uniquely Utah.”
There, in one of the women’s basements, he admired a massive, long-arm sewing machine. He watched six women sit around a table, some with sewing machines in front of them, one making overalls for her grandnephew, his mother working on a square of a quilt.
He witnessed warm moments similar to the ones he crafted in his novel.
“They’ve been quilting and working on projects together for just decades, and so they all know each other incredibly well, and it was really funny to sit there and just see the rhythm of this group of people who were basically like family to each other,” McCann said. “They’re all kind of talking over each other, and there are like 16 different conversations happening at the same time, and they’re all involved in all 16 of those conversations.”
“Stitched” portrays a similar group of Ogden-based quilters, who drive one another crazy but love one another fiercely. The book is written with McCann’s trademark wit and humor — a charming look at the life of older women in suburban Utah.
But he hopes people who read his first novel take away what he observed in his mother’s quilting group.
“More than comedy, it’s about … the importance of cultivating strong relationships and showing up for one another,” McCann said. “I would love it if people who read this book came out of it feeling better about the world and feel more inclined to invest in the relationships in their lives that matter.”
After debuting Sept. 8, “Stitched” came in at No. 5 on The New York Times bestseller list for paperback trade fiction, alongside books like “Theo of Golden” and “Dungeon Crawler Carl.”
Note to readers: Eli McCann writes a monthly humor column for The Salt Lake Tribune.
This story was produced by The Salt Lake Tribune and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
