A Spool of Blue Thread

A multigenerational tale of the Whitshank family and their Baltimore home. Seventy-something Red and Abby anchor the family: he works in construction, she's now a retired social worker. They live in a cherished home built by Red's father Junior; they raised their four kids in it and those kids are now grown and gone. But when Abby starts having intermittent memory troubles, the kids return home: prodigal son Denny and his responsible younger brother Stem move back in, and the two daughters, Nora and Amanda, start spending a lot more time at the family home. Moving back and forth in time, we get acquainted with each generation, learning the stories they tell themselves about family identity, as well as the secrets they've kept—and sometimes are still keeping—from each other. Tyler is at once a sharp and compassionate observer of family life; this was a poignant exploration of how we make meaning of our stories, how we cope with our reality, and how we may choose to both lean on and hide from the people we love. I enjoyed this for its plethora of savvy insights about family life, numerous pithy one-liners, and the steady presence of the house throughout, a character in its own right.