A Spool Of Blue Thread

Manufacturer	Unbranded
Model Number	9780099598480

The novel is about the Whitshanks and their family. It is set in the 1950s and 1960s and tells the story of Abby and Red, their four children, and their grandchildren. Abby and Red fall in love on a beautiful day in July 1959. Their families are very close and their stories are only half of the picture. There are jealousies, disappointments, and secrets among the Whitshanks. The novel is a celebration of family and their relationships.

Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize

It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon. . . This is how Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she fell in love with Red that day in July 1959. The Whitshanks are one of those families that radiate togetherness: an indefinable, enviable kind of specialness. But they are also like all families, in that the stories they tell themselves reveal only part of the picture. Abby and Red and their four grown children have accumulated not only tender moments, laughter, and celebrations, but also jealousies, disappointments, and carefully guarded secrets. From Reds father and mother, newly arrived in Baltimore in the 1920s, to Abby and Reds grandchildren carrying the family legacy boisterously into the twenty-first century, here are four generations of Whitshanks, their lives unfolding in and around the sprawling, lovingly worn Baltimore house that has always been their anchor.

Brimming with all the insight, humor, and generosity of spirit that are the hallmarks of Anne Tylers work, A Spool of Blue Thread tells a poignant yet unsentimental story in praise of family in all its emotional complexity. It is a novel to cherish.