"Beautiful story"

Lydia Hoffman has defeated cancer twice. To celebrate life, Lydia opens A Good Yarn, a knitting supplies store in Seattle. She also teaches a class on knitting. The first lesson is "How to Knit a Baby Blanket".

Jacqueline Donovan reacts poorly to her son's news that she is to be a grandmother for the first time. She does not like her daughter-in-law Tammie Lee. Maybe her bitterness is because she knows her marriage to Reese, a partner in an architectural firm, is dying. She must make amends with her son Paul so she joins A Good Yarn knitting class.

Desperate to become pregnant, Carol Girard joins the class seeking hope that her and her husband Doug's final attempt with in vitro pregnancy succeeds. This is her last chance to have the child she craves.

The court ordered Alix Townsend to do community service as part of her sentencing. She decides that knitting for the Linus Project should satisfy her case worker. However, she needs to first learn to knit so she joins the class too.

This four diverse women bond in friendship and love as they work on the baby blanket. Though their individual dreams may not be answered, a group dream forges as each learns the meaning of life.

THE SHOP ON BLOSSOM STREET is a fabulous deep character study that rotates the narration between the women so that the audience has four subplots that cleverly knit together into a powerful look at the ups and downs of modern day living. Though not all dreams are fulfilled and some change for instance to cooking, fans will enjoy Debbie Macomber's strong tale of four females struggling to overcome different setbacks.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted April 30, 2004

Summary

Four lives knit together . . . There's a little shop on Blossom Street in Seattle. You go there to buy yarn, knitting supplies and patterns -- and now you can join a knitting class. How to knit a baby blanket: that's the first lesson. Lydia Hoffman owns the shop, which she calls A Good Yarn. It represents her dream of a new beginning, a life free from the cancer that has ravaged her twice. A life that offers a chance at love . . .and maybe marriage. Jacqueline Donovan, the first woman to join the class, is estranged from her husband; her marriage has dwindled into an arrangement of separate rooms and separate lives. She disapproves of the woman married to her only son, but if she knits a baby blanket, she can at least pretend to like her pregnant daughter-in-law. For Carol Girard, the baby blanket brings a message of hope as she and her husband make a final attempt at in vitro pregnancy. And tough-looking Alix Townsend -- that's Alix with an i -- is learning to knit her blanket for a court-ordered community service project. These four women, brought together by the age-old craft of knitting, make unexpected discoveries -- about themselves and each other. Discoveries that lead to love, to friendship and acceptance, to laughter and dreams. Discoveries only women can share . . .