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The knitting club is about more than knitting...
and book clubs are about far more than reading.
As anyone in a book club can tell you, the clubs are about creating bonds and sharing lives as much as they are about books and ideas.
In this novel people find friendship and connection (or re-connection) in unexpected places.
The trick is being willing-and unafraid-to open the heart to possibilities.
That's something that Georgia Walker has trouble doing, and as it turns out, she has good reason.
A small-town girl who goes to the big city, Georgia headed to New York after college to start her career in publishing.
She achieved success, made friends, and fell in love-all the right things.
Well, almost all the right things...
with one exception.
Georgia found herself pregnant...
and alone.
At hearing the news of the little bundle of joy, her boyfriend couldn't find the exit fast enough, putting an entire ocean between the three of them.
Faced with raising her daughter on her own, George took a brave stand.
She didn't head back to her home in Pennsylvania, but decided to make a go of it right where she was, in New York.
On the advice of an acquaintance she turned her passion for knitting into a money-making proposition.
First, she knitted for commissions, eventually opening her own yarn store, Walker and Daughter.
And this takes us up to the present time, where the story begins...
or continues, depending on your point of view..
Walker and Daughter is flourishing, thanks to a recent spate of publicity.
Georgia lives over the shop with her now preteen daughter, Dakota, and admits to being content...
if perhaps a tad lonely.
Overall, though, life is good, orderly, and predictable.
Spurred on by 70-year-old Anita, a nurturing friend, Georgia initiates a knitting circle on Friday evenings-and pulls in an assortment of customers and oddballs.
Among the clicking of needles and munching on cookies, the women indulge in gossip and soon begin to share bits and pieces of themselves as they spin out the intimate yarn of their lives.
There is Darwin Chiu with a troubled marriage; Lucie, a soon-to-be first-time mother with no man in her life; KC whose career has stalled; and Per who spends her nights designing handbags after her days as an employee of the yarn shop.
The novel tends to drag a bit here as it allows all the knitters a chance to unravel their stories.
But gradually it picks up when Georgia's own story moves to the forefront.
Two individuals make their re-entrances into Georgia's life.
Or they attempt to, as Georgia struggles with opening herself up-once again-to possible hurt from each.
The first, Cat, a high school friend who once betrayed Georgia, now a glamor wife, wants Georgia to knit her a dress-and is willing to pay a very hefty fee.
Georgia isn't certain she can ever trust this self-centered woman again.
The second is James, Georgia's former lover-and father of Dakota-a brilliant, successful African-American architect returned from England.
James is convinced he can offer Dakota a connection to her black heritage that her white mother cannot.
Showering Dakota with attention and gifts, he is determined to reinsert himself into both mother and daughter's life.
Georgia is wary, wondering if she can call up forgiveness after his 12-year abandonment.
The high point in the novel revolves around a trip to Scotland-with Dakota and Cat in tow-to visit Georgia's grandmother.
It turns out that Gran offers wisdom to both Georgia and Cat, encouraging both of them to make needed changes in their lives.
Georgia, especially, she counsels to live in the present and stop obsessing over what is in the past.
An unexpected twist of fate turns Georgia's life on its head as she learns that strength and self-protections is not always the answer.
Kate Jacob's debut novel is immensely readable as readers follow its compelling heroine through tragedy to acceptance.
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