Fiction
The Bobbins of Saint Anna
Book under development
About the Book
In the quiet Saint Anna quarter of nineteenth-century Brugge, gifted young lacemaker Romanie Delbeke grows up to the ceaseless click of wooden bobbins in a family whose survival has depended on lace for generations. When an unexpected commission from one of the city’s old houses draws her into a world of wealth, secrets, and forbidden love, the obligations holding her family together begin to unravel. As a stolen pattern threatens everything she values, Romanie must choose between the craft she inherited, the people who depend on her, and the future she has only begun to imagine. Set against a changing Brugge and the fading dominance of handmade lace, The Bobbins of Saint Anna is a story of love, livelihood, dignity, and the quiet things passed from one generation to the next.
STORY COMPLETE · PUBLICATION 2027
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Romanie knew which woman had stopped working without looking up. Her mother's bobbins clicked evenly, her grandmother's answered in short impatient bursts, and the neighbor beside the window always hesitated before a difficult crossing. Silence had a different shape depending on whose hands had made it.
This morning it was her mother's.
The lace merchant stood in the doorway with his hat still on. He held their finished piece between finger and thumb, allowing the edge to hang close to the damp floor.
“The price has changed,” he said.
Romanie kept her eyes on her pillow. Twelve pairs waited beneath her fingers. If she looked at him, she would say something, and if she said something, her mother would pay for it after he had gone.
“The work has not,” her grandmother answered.
He smiled as though an old woman had told a charming story.
Outside, a cart crossed the bridge. Inside, Romanie moved two bobbins that belonged to the inherited pattern, then reached for a third that did not. The small alteration made a leaf turn toward the light instead of away from it.
Her mother noticed. Romanie saw the warning in her face.
The merchant folded the lace.
“Other households are glad of the work.”
For the first time, Romanie wondered what would happen if all those other households were told what their neighbors had actually been paid.
Meet the Author
John K. Milius
John K. Milius brings four decades of sales, leadership, customer relationships, and hard-earned commercial judgment to the page. His fiction turns that same eye toward Brugge—a city of water, memory, history, and stories waiting beneath the stones.
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