A SPOOL OF BLUE THREAD

This multigenerational novel chronicling a Baltimore family is beautiful and moving. It’s not plot-driven; its momentum is derived from subtle family dynamics that propel the characters forward, or rather backward, as the book starts in the present and goes mostly in reverse chronology.

Each of the book’s four parts serve almost as a short story. The best of these describes a pivotal day in the main character’s life that begins as a “beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green morning in July of 1959” and is referenced throughout the book. The entirety of this chapter shows how slowly, gently, inevitably, this character makes a decision that will shape her life and the lives of all the generations that follow. We know her choice before the chapter starts, but watching her certainty unfold throughout this chapter is a lovely read, and a testament to how decisions reside in the corners of our awareness until their presence can no longer be ignored.

It is here that biscuits are made, shaped with a drinking glass. These buttermilk biscuits may not be authentically southern, but they made me look outside my own windows at a breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon and realize I’d become very fond of this book and many of the characters in it.