A Good Yarn is women's fiction. I picked up the book, because I saw the illustration of a basket full of yarn that suggested warmth or my mother, who used to be a knitter. I never could knit well, although I learned two stitches, knit and purl, and managed to come up with a few baby items for my kids. Reading this book made me yearn for knitting again.
The story, however, is not about knitting but about friendship, although knitting is used like a prop. The main character, Lydia Hoffman, has fought cancer successfully, and she opens a store, "A Good Yarn," to sell yarn. Inside the store, she also teaches knitting to a couple of groups. Brad Goetz, Lydia's love interest, is the UPS driver who brings in deliveries. Brad has a little girl who Lydia adores. For her daughter's sake and to Lydia's dismay, Brad makes up with his disloyal wife, only to change course again later.
I found the secondary characters quite interesting and almost as close to the main characters in the strength of their portrayal. The rigid and prudish Elise Beaumont, the retired librarian, and her ex-husband and professional gambler, Maverick, make an interesting couple whose passion and conflicts attract the reader's interest.
My favorite character is Bethanne Hamlin who, after facing a hurtful divorce, joins the knitting class and comes out a winner in the party-planning business with some magic from Macomber's writing license. Bethanne's wayward daughter is helped by another knitter, Courtney Pulanski, a depressed and overweight teen who falls for Bethanne's son.
A little fairy dust at the end leaves the reader on a positive note with the celebration of female power and success. The plot has a steady pace and makes the reader feel pleased to be reading this book.
As a happy and gentle story, A Good Yarn is not frivolous or trite at all. Each character is very well developed and each character learns to cope with life on different terms.
The author, Debbie Macomber, with over 100 books of contemporary women's fiction, has garnered many awards. Some of her other books are: Cedar Cove, The Shop on Blossom Street, Heart of Texas, Return to Promise, Promise, Navy Woman, Buffalo Valley, Dakota Born, Orchard Valley Trilogy, Almost Paradise, Those Manning Men, Moon Over Water, Angels Everywhere, Touched By Angels, 5-B Poppy Place, This Matter of Marriage, Morning Comes Softly, Some Kind of Wonderful.