The Shop On Blossom Street

Title: The Shop On Blossom Street
Author: Debbie Macomber
Paperback; 416 pages
Published May 2005

This is another Debbie Macomber book that I couldn't put down. I'm a sucker for family-related stories and with this one, I ended up with tears on my eyes, not because of loneliness but because of the warmth and love depicted on the story.

By the way, here's the summary at the back cover of the book.

Four lives knit together ...
There's a little shop on Blossom Street in Seattle called A Good Yarn. You go there to buy knitting supplies and patterns -- and now it's offering a knitting class. The first lesson: how to knit a baby blanket.
For owner Lydia Hoffman, the shop represents her dream of beginning a new life free from the cancer that has ravaged her twice. A life that offers a chance at love ... and maybe marriage.
Jacqueline Donovan is stuck in a marriage that 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 tense-looking Alix Townsend -- that's Alix with an "i" -- is learning to knit her blanket for her court-ordered community service project.
Brought together by an age-old craft, these four women make unexpected discoveries -- about themselves and each other. Discoveries that lead to love, to friendship and acceptance, to laughter and dreams.

Interestingly, The Shop on Blossom Street is the first in the Blossom Street series and it deals with knitting. It also deals with a woman who is surviving cancer and striving with her life after her father's death. She gets a scare when the cancer may have come back and she finds out who is truly there for her. The development of her relationship with her sister's characters had a great impact on me.

There are 4 women, thus four stories, with Lydia and her yarn shop (the tie that binds the stories together) at the center. Each woman has their own crisis and are very different from each other. Yet, they all become friends and learn to support and receive support from each other.

It was awesome for a feel good story. It's a romance book, but not a bodice ripper. The women are complex, have issues, and you can see why they made the choices that landed them in the position. Somehow, I got into the lives of the 4 main characters. I look forward to reading the next book and learning more about these 4 women.

My rating for The Shop On Blossom Street: 3 Bookmarks!