Knitting Circle

After the loss of her only child, Mary Baxter finds herself unable to read or write, the activities that used to be her primary source of comfort. She reluctantly joins a knitting circle as a way to fill her lonely days—not knowing it will change her life. As they teach Mary new knitting techniques, the women in the circle also reveal their own secrets of loss, love, and hope. With time, Mary is finally able to tell her own story of grief, and in so doing finds the spark of life again.

“"This book is rich in sensory detail...This book shines a light on women helping each other and the world one stitch at a time."”

"A wondrously simple book about something complicated: the nearly unendurable process of enduring a great loss. The novel, like knitting, seems to make itself up as it goes along, the threads bound and gathered into a whole." -- Carrie Brown - Washington Post
"Acutely moving…The women’s tragedies unfurl like skeins of yarn rolling down a slope." -- Allison Lynn - People
"A heartbreaker." -- Elissa Schappel - Vanity Fair
"I closed The Knitting Circle feeling uplifted, even cleansed. I felt as if I were seeing with fresh eyes, ready to forgive old hurts and entertain new thoughts." -- Marion Winik - Newsday
"Powerful and affecting." -- John Marshal - Seattle Post-Intelligencer
"One can only admire Hood for the effort she takes in this book to describe an insupportable grief…Undeniably real. The lesson—that being willing to share our stories, we learn how to live—cannot be dismissed." -- Julie Wittes Schlack - Boston Globe
"[Hood’s] portrait of Mary’s grief is so real and so raw. The unpredictable arc of it…gives Mary’s grief a three-dimensional humanity that a less familiar portraitist might have missed…The prose of The Knitting Circle is clear, even as Mary’s perspective is clouded by heartbreak, and the pace of the story is just right." -- Beth Schwartzapfel - Providence Journal
"Hood’s words…pull you along, like a knitting pattern, one mesmerizing, settling click at a time, stitch by stitch, row by row, until you find yourself with something solid and real." -- Peggy McMullen - The Oregonian
"This book is rich in sensory detail…This book shines a light on women helping each other and the world one stitch at a time." -- Jan Marin Tramontano - Albany Times Union

Ann Hood is the editor of Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting and the best-selling author of The Book That Matters Most, The Knitting Circle, The Red Thread, Comfort, and An Italian Wife, among other works. She is the recipient of two Pushcart Prizes, a Best American Spiritual Writing Award, a Best American Food Writing Award, a Best American Travel Writing Award, and the Paul Bowles Prize for Short Fiction. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

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