It all began in the classrooms of Westwood Elementary.
Rachel Smalley was a young mom of two kids at Westwood, helping to launch an art program at the school. Through the program, the students were able to learn Dalton’s history and create artwork inspired by it.
That’s when Rachel learned about Catherine Evans Whitener: a teenage girl whose entrepreneurial spirit eventually led to a billion-dollar industry in Dalton.
But life with small children was busy. The idea got tucked away, carried quietly in the back of her mind for more than 20 years.
When the house went quiet
Years later, COVID brought Rachel’s grown children home for a season. Her son and daughter, adults now, moved back into their childhood rooms. For about a year, the house was full again.
Then they left.
Rachel sat in the sudden quiet, approaching her 50th birthday. “I thought, what am I going to do?” she says. “I’d like to have something to have some conversation about with people and not just be some vapid old woman.”
She’d been a teacher. She’d been an involved mom. She knew she needed something that was hers. “What am I going to do?” she asked herself again.
She remembered Catherine’s story, and decided it was time.
The girl who started an industry
Catherine Evans Whitener was twelve years old in 1890 when she visited her cousins and saw a colonial candlewick bedspread. She fell in love with it. Three years later, at fifteen, she decided to make one herself.
At first, her stitches came slowly, each one painstakingly placed over months of effort. But soon her hands found their rhythm and her confidence grew. Through trial and error, she rediscovered an old tufting stitch that created the texture she wanted.
When she was nineteen or twenty, Catherine made a bedspread as a wedding gift for her brother. His new wife had a sister who wanted one too. “Will you make me one?” the sister asked.
Catherine said yes. She sold it for $2.50.
Orders started coming in from friends and family. Catherine began teaching her method to other women whom she called her “thimble and needle ladies.” She shared her patterns freely and encouraged the women to start their own businesses. Some of those women made far more money than Catherine ever did. She never acted like a gatekeeper.
“She was the one that just taught these people, and it rippled,” Rachel says. “That’s what she was about.”
By the time machines entered the picture, Dalton had become the Bedspread Center of the World. The machines used the exact same tufting stitch that Catherine had, and the bedspreads evolved into bathroom rugs, then into wall-to-wall carpet. Before Catherine died, the carpet industry was worth a billion dollars.
“Catherine showed us that Dalton is somewhere an idea can become an industry,” Rachel says.
Learning to write
Rachel had a story. But there was one small problem: she had no idea how to write a children’s book.
“I had no idea what I was doing,” she admits.
She took classes. She attended national conferences. She worked with a writing coach and multiple editors. She joined the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. She read everything she could find about picture book structure and pacing.
One of her biggest challenges: how do you make a bedspread exciting to kids today? And how do you get from a twelve-year-old in a log cabin to a billion-dollar carpet industry in just forty pages?
“When I first started writing about it, I was writing in more like a school report form,” Rachel laughed.
Her coaches taught her to narrow the focus and to keep Catherine at the center. She interviewed Catherine’s great-niece and learned the family called her Cathy. That’s the name she uses in the book.
Rachel also worked closely with local historians from the Whitfield-Murray Historical Society and the Bandy Heritage Center. She hosted a luncheon for what she calls “the matriarchs of the Historical Society” and read them the manuscript.
At first, it was somewhat uncomfortable for Rachel to share the book with her friends. She was worried that they would smile and nod, while internally rolling their eyes that they had to sit through an amateur author’s children’s book reading.
Thankfully, one of her friends smiled and told her, “I truly thought it was really good.”
Bucking the trend
Rachel had spent years on her manuscript. She’d polished it to the point where she felt confident submitting it to literary agents and traditional publishers.
Then she heard someone else in town was working on another project to honor Catherine.
“I sort of panicked a little bit,” Rachel says. “I was like, well, I don’t want this to just be sitting here, because I’ve worked pretty hard on it.”
She understood the reality of the publishing industry. “Just because you have the best book doesn’t mean it’s getting published,” she says. “And just because you’re getting published doesn’t mean you have the best book.”
The decision: self-publish.
“I was very self-conscious at first about doing the self-publishing,” Rachel admits. The stigma, even though it’s fading, still lingered. “The first goal was just not to embarrass myself,” she joked.
Self-publishing meant she’d need money. She started fundraising through the Northwest Georgia Community Foundation, and it paid off. Rachel assembled a team that would make any traditional publisher jealous.
She hired an editor who’d worked at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. She brought on a copy editor trusted by major publishing houses. She connected with a professional book designer from Hachette Book Group.
Finding an illustrator that she felt great about was the last crucial step. “The illustrations were very important to me,” she said, “and I wanted to be able to have a really experienced, quality illustrator.”
Rachel had initially wanted an illustrator who turned out not to be available for her book. But the illustrator’s agent suggested Katie Hickey as another great choice. Katie Hickey…the name sounded familiar.
“Lo and behold, guess who happened to have a picture book biography in my house that she had illustrated?” Rachel says. “I did.”
“That was one of the most exciting moments,” she says, “when I got the really good illustrator.”
The hardest work
Rachel created a 100-page research deck and a 25-page spread-by-spread art guide to ensure historical accuracy. She’s now working through revisions on 20 double-page spreads.
“This has been the hardest project I’ve ever undertaken,” Rachel says.
She’s worn every hat: author, editor, art director, project manager. “It’s not just the learning and the writing,” she says. “It has been a lot of other stuff.”
Being particular about the details comes from a deep sense of responsibility. “I consider this sort of the origin story of the town that I live in,” Rachel explains. “It’s a very personal thing.”
Her husband Robert has been her anchor through it all. “An editor, sounding board, and tireless encourager,” she calls him.
Her close friends have shown up when she’s discouraged. “They’re just like, ‘it’s going to be so great. You just got to get to the end,'” Rachel says. “I think if I had known it would be this hard, it definitely would have given me more pause at the beginning.”
But there’s also this: “I know when I finally hold the finished book in my hands, it will be one of the most extraordinary moments of my life.”
What comes next
Tufted is set to release in Fall 2026. All the profits from the book will return to the Appalachian Historic Preservation Fund to support more storytelling that honors the region. “From the beginning, I’ve sort of felt a calling about this story,” she says. “I really just kind of want to play a role in sharing it.”
Rachel is also working with Anna Adamson at Believe Greater Dalton and the Junior Achievement Discovery Center to secure enough funding to provide copies to sixth graders throughout the region.
Sixth grade was chosen intentionally. Catherine was twelve when she first saw a candlewick bedspread, and fifteen when she made her own. Rachel hopes her story can inspire more young people toward innovation and entrepreneurship.
From a young mom learning alongside her kids to an author about to share Catherine’s story with thousands, Rachel’s journey mirrors Catherine’s in its own way. One bedspread became an industry. One idea, carried for twenty years, became a book.
“I could never have done it alone,” Rachel says. “My husband, my friends, mentors, and this community have carried me every step of the way.”
A book created by a community, for a community. One stitch at a time.
For more:
Follow Rachel’s journey on Instagram at @readrachelsbooks. To support Appalachian storytelling, contributions can be made to the Appalachian Historic Preservation Fund through the Community Foundation of Northwest Georgia.
