A memoir of crossing cultures, losing love, and finding home by a New York Times notable author. As steadily and quietly as her marriage falls apart, so Kyoko Mori's understanding of knitting deepens. From flawed school mittens to beautiful unmatched patterns of cardigans, hats and shawls, Kyoko draws the connection between knitting and the new life she tried to establish in the U.S. Interspersed with the story of knitting throughout, the narrative contemplates the nature of love, loss, and what holds a marriage together.

Kyoko Mori’s award-winning first novel, Shizuko's Daughter, was hailed by the New York Times as “a jewel of a book, one of those rarities that shine out only a few times in a generation.” Her many critically acclaimed books include Polite Lies, The Dream of Water, and the novels, Stone Field, True Arrow and One Bird. Her stories and essays have appeared in The American Scholar, The Kenyon Review, The Prairie Schooner, Harvard Review, The Best American Essays, and other journals and anthologies. Mori holds a Ph.D. in English/Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She was Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Creative Writing, Harvard (1999-2005) and, for the last 5 years, on the faculty of the Lesley University Low-Residency MFA program in Cambridge. Kyoko Mori is associate professor of English at George Mason University. She lives in Washington, DC .