A memoir of crossing cultures, losing love and finding home by a New York Times Notable author in her prime. As steadily and quietly as her marriage falls apart, so Kyoko Mori's understanding of knitting deepens. From the flawed school mittens made in her native Japan, where needlework is used as a way to prepare women for marriage and silence, to the beautiful unmatched patterns of cardigans, hats and shawls made in the American Midwest, Kyoko draws the connection between knitting and the new life she tried to establish in the U.S. From the suicide of her mother to the last empty days of her marriage, Kyoko finds a way to begin again on her own terms. Interspersed with fact and history about knitting throughout, the narrative touchingly contemplates the nature of love, loss and what holds a marriage together. In the tradition of M F K Fisher's The Gastronomical Me, Joan Didion's Where I Was From and Michael Pollan's The Botany of Desire, Mori examines a specific subject to understand human nature - when to unravel, when to begin again, when to drop the stitch, and when to declare...it's finished.
