“?‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,’?” Nigel proclaimed, regarding the screen expectantly, his rich baritone no doubt reaching all corners of the room. At sixty-four, Nigel was as ruggedly handsome as when he had first played Henry V for the Royal Shakespeare Company in his native London four decades earlier. An avid swimmer and longtime vegan, he was as fit as a man twenty years younger, and the few lines around his hazel eyes and threads of silver in his gingery-brown hair made him appear all the more distinguished. Julia, who knew the same adjective was almost never used to compliment a woman, took care to keep her own hair the same lovely shade of honey blond she’d favored since the early 1980s. Her vigilant stylist had vowed that no gossip columnist would ever have cause to snark that Julia looked too old to play Nigel’s love interest, not on her watch.
“Our fifth season,” Ellen marveled, shaking her head, then reaching up to adjust her glasses. She had been a rather awkward and mousy twentysomething when she and Julia had first met, but after a few years in Los Angeles, and with Julia’s tactful guidance, she had acquired a fine sense of style. That evening, Ellen’s tan slacks, whitescoop-neck top, and blue blazer were well tailored, and her thick, light brown hair was cut in a chic layered bob. “Honestly, who could have imagined it, when we shot the pilot?”
“I could have, and I did.” Julia smoothed her linen slacks as she settled more comfortably into her seat. “I knew we were on the cusp of something glorious and groundbreaking.”
“Really? Even after the movie version imploded so spectacularly?”
“The concept was excellent. The film didn’t implode until after you and I resigned.” Julia tossed Nigel a smile that might have been mistaken as flirtatious by anyone who didn’t know them well. “If this dashing fellow had been cast in the movie, it might have succeeded even without us.”
“Doubt it,” said Ellen flatly. “Stephen Deneford ruined my script beyond redemption with the ridiculous changes he demanded. As long as he was directing, not even the second coming of Laurence Olivier could have saved that movie. No offense, Nigel.”
“None taken, darling.” Nigel waved a hand dismissively. “We all suffer in comparison to Olivier.”
Julia patted his shoulder fondly. “I’d rather have you as my scene partner any day.”
She would have gone on, but the house lights were dimming. A moment later, the familiar hammered dulcimer, guitar, and fiddle tune of their theme song flowed from the surround sound speakers, though the music was nearly drowned out by applause and cheers. Julia too applauded enthusiastically as the opening credits rolled, and she breathed a happy sigh when the title in its familiar vintage font appeared, superimposed over a crane shot of a sweeping prairie landscape.
That title hadn’t always inspired such delight.
Years before, when Julia had been searching for a new project after her previous series had been abruptly canceled, Maury had shown her the script for a movie he promised was the project they had been searching for. “It has heart, it has warmth, and it has a fantastic partfor you,” he had said, placing the script in her lap and closing her hands around it. “Trust me.”
“A Patchwork Life,” Julia had read the cover page aloud, testing the sound of it. She had winced so forcibly she could’ve pulled a muscle. She wantedMasterpiece Theatre, and Maury had given her something so corny it could have been freshly harvested from a Midwestern farm. But Maury had represented her throughout her career and she trusted his judgment, so, shaking her head and expecting the worst, she had turned to the first page and had begun to read.
Within moments, she had forgotten everything else troubling her—the lamentable demise ofFamily Tree, the humiliating dearth of new offers, the patronizing responses of the few industry execs who owed Maury too much to avoid returning his phone calls. Sadie Henderson and her life in pioneer-era Kansas drew Julia in entirely. She could almost smell the prairie grasses and tilled soil as the script transported her to the small prairie homestead Sadie struggled to build with her husband, Augustus. When Augustus died in a tragic accident, leaving Sadie with two young sons to raise alone, she persisted despite grasshopper plagues and drought even when other settlers gave up and returned back east. Impoverished but ever resourceful, Sadie sold off cherished family quilts and took in sewing from her more successful neighbors to make ends meet, running the farm by day and stitching her neighbors’ quilts late into the night. Sadie’s quilting kept her family alive until at last, years later, the farm flourished.
After she finished the final page, Julia had held the script to her chest, lost in the details of Sadie’s hardship and triumph. If only she could meet Sadie and learn her secrets for persevering when all hope was lost. That was impossible, sadly, but Maury had introduced her to Ellen, Sadie’s great-granddaughter, a promising young director and screenwriter. Julia was thrilled to learn that Sadie Henderson was not just a fictional character, and that Ellen’s wonderfully immersivescript had been inspired by her diaries. When Ellen confessed that there was no one in the world she would rather have portray her great-grandmother than Julia, Ellen’s sincere admiration and remarkable familiarity with Julia’s repertoire had compelled her to accept the role on the spot.
After that lovely beginning, they couldn’t have imagined thatA Patchwork Life, the movie, would crash and burn less than a year later. Julia and Ellen had bailed out before then, increasingly disillusioned with the film’s jarring departure from their original vision. First, the studio had replaced Ellen as director, dismissing her as too young and inexperienced to helm a major feature film even though she had written it, even though her previous movie had won an honorable mention at Sundance. Next, Stephen Deneford had cast as Augustus the up-and-coming action star Rick Rowan, lead in the blockbuster movieJungle Vengeance, despite his limited range and the fact that he was more than twenty-five years younger than Julia, and thus rather implausible in the role of her husband. Then Rick’s agent persuaded Deneford not to kill off Augustus but to keep him around in the role of heroic provider and protector. Otherwise, Rick warned, Augustus’s absence would “turn it into a chick movie.”
“Chick movie?” Ellen had bristled at the script meeting. “This is a movie about women—strong, intelligent women going about the difficult business of life in nearly impossible circumstances.”
Rick had shrugged, puzzled. “Right. A chick movie.” He had flipped through the script, shaking his head. “It should be Augustus, not Sadie, who keeps the farm from going up in flames. He should be the one to scare off the claim jumpers. I mean, come on, who’s going to believe a woman did all that?”
Ellen had fixed him with a blistering look. “That’s how it really happened.”
“How it really happened doesn’t matter,” Deneford had said, rubbing his forehead as if warding off a headache. “What matters is that it’s believable.”
“I fail to see what’s so unbelievable about a woman performing heroic acts, especially to protect her children,” Julia had said. “Women were widowed all the time on the frontier. They could hardly afford to wait around for a man to rescue them.”
Ellen had thrown her a look of sheer gratitude. Julia had given her a small nod in return, but her conscience had pricked her annoyingly. She had spoken up to protect her role, not the integrity of Ellen’s script. The scene where Sadie faced down the unscrupulous cattle ranchers with nothing more than an unloaded rifle and a pitchfork contained one of the film’s best monologues. Julia wasn’t about to graciously hand over such an Oscar-worthy scene to a pompous, over-muscled Rambo wannabe.
But Julia and Ellen had lost that battle, and soon thereafter, the men had conspired to entirely reimagine the film, now retitledPrairie Vengeance, as a vehicle for Rick. Dismayed, Ellen had nonetheless revised the script as ordered rather than lose what little creative input she still possessed. Julia too had persevered as her most compelling scenes were rewritten and turned over to the beautiful ingenue cast as Young Sadie. But when Deneford had decided to remove all of the quilting from the picture and to have Sadie save her farm not by takinginsewing but by takingonshifts at the local bordello, Ellen had resigned, unable to bear the insult to her great-grandmother’s memory. Julia had followed her out the door, certain she was extinguishing the embers of her career by doing so.
She had never been so happy to be so wrong. As filming continued without her,Prairie Vengeancewent so far over budget that Deneford had been obliged to forgo his salary in exchange for back-end compensation, so he would be paid only if the movie made a profit. He had boasted in the trades that he was certain to benefit from the deal, but his confidence had been wildly unwarranted. When a final cut was ready, screening audiences panned it so vehemently that the studio sent the movie straight to video, where it quietly slipped into obscurity.
Through it all Ellen had retained the rights to her great-grandmother’s diaries, and withPrairie Vengeancegone and mostly forgotten, she had rewritten her original screenplay as a television series. When Ellen offered Julia the role, she explained that in this new version, Sadie Henderson would be Augustus’s mother, not his wife, summoned to Kansas to keep house and raise her grandsons after their mother’s death. Augustus would still perish, right on schedule, leaving Sadie in charge of the homestead.
Julia appreciated that Ellen had tactfully refrained from pointing out that the changes were a pragmatic concession to Julia’s age. “But this isn’t how it really happened,” Julia felt obliged to remind her. “I know how important it is to you to be faithful to your great-grandmother’s diaries.”
“It’s more important that the role is a perfect fit for you,” Ellen had replied. “As I’ve said from the beginning, there’s no one in the world I’d rather have portray my great-grandmother than you.”
Her heart full, Julia had accepted the role gladly, gratefully. PBS had immediately green-lit the pilot, and almost before she could catch her breath, Julia was once again donning Sadie’s corset and calico dresses. Coming to work every day on a much friendlier, motivated, competent set was a pleasure, and every risk she and Ellen had taken was validated when the show premiered to excellent ratings and glowing reviews. Though it lacked the vast budget and reach of programs on the Big Four networks, by the end of the second season,A Patchwork Lifehad become a cultural phenomenon, first in the US and then, after the BBC picked it up, abroad. Season after season it became, indisputably, one of the few shows considered appointment television. Millions of viewers gathered around their TVs every week at the appointed hour—setting their VCRs and DVRs if they had inescapable conflicts—and obsessively discussed every plot point and character revelation around watercoolers and in blog posts the next day. Three different Kansas towns hosted annualPatchwork Lifefestivals, earning millions of dollars in tourist revenue, and one small citynear the ranch where most of the exteriors were filmed transformed a long-shuttered storefront into aPatchwork Lifemuseum, revitalizing their downtown. As for the cast, the relative unknowns were catapulted into fame and success, while Julia found her career rejuvenated beyond her most ambitious hopes.
To her astonishment, one of the first fan letters she received—on elegant stationery in impeccable penmanship—was from Deneford’s mother, Lillian, who declaredA Patchwork Lifeher favorite program and praised Julia’s performance in particular. Julia promptly wrote back to thank her for her kind words, and a cordial, intermittent correspondence blossomed. Occasionally their paths crossed at awards programs and charitable events, where they always enjoyed a pleasant chat. They were mutually delighted to discover they were both members of the same women’s fraternity, Pi Beta Phi, making a sincere friendship inevitable. They never spoke about Stephen orPrairie Vengeance, which probably helped them remain on such cordial terms.
The first two seasons ofA Patchwork Lifecovered nearly everything in Sadie Henderson’s diaries, so after that, the show departed from the original source material. Ellen seamlessly introduced new plotlines inspired by actual historical events, as well as new, entirely fictional characters. Nigel had joined the cast in the middle of season two to play Benjamin Atherton, a ruggedly handsome cattleman and will-they-or-won’t-they love interest for Sadie. Julia and Nigel had made the most of their sparkling on-screen chemistry, delighting viewers with scenes of heated conflict, smoldering anger, grudging respect, secret longing, and steadfast but wistful friendship. Mutually admiring but competitive, Julia and Nigel pushed each other to perform ever more brilliantly, which inspired the rest of the cast to rise to meet them. No wonder the show had garnered numerous awards through the years, although Nigel’s much-wished-for second BAFTA still eluded him.
An expectant hush settled over the theater as the recap sequence played, punctuated by quick smatterings of applause as various actorsmade their first appearance on-screen for a line or a reaction shot. When Julia appeared as Sadie, eyes flashing as she delivered a withering rebuke to Nigel as Ben, Noah reached over the back of her seat to clasp her shoulder. “You tell him, Sadie,” he murmured.
