As Gracie strives to make sense of clues (a sewn blackbird, a lost e-mail) to the secrets her father left behind, she heads to Montreal, asking Beau to travel with her. Like Smith’s open-hearted nonfiction, Threads of Us explores connections and discovery, how at our best people can lift and support each other. This time, in swift but richly emotional prose, she employs multiple perspectives to explore the challenges and urgent importance of resolving and conquering trauma, including both leads, of course, but also surprises like Cooper, a private investigator and friend of Beau, and Eloise, a First Nations shop owner in Montreal, whose past, present, and lineage are sketched out with touching detail.

Smith smartly allows these other perspectives to weave into the story of Gracie and Beau, giving them such major roles in the novel’s revelations. For all Smith’s insights into relationship dynamics, spirituality also plays a major role, with the use of symbolic storytelling and “‘heirlooms” such as the Blackbird given to Gracie. Readers will appreciate Smith’s deft sleight-of-hand, building mystery and anticipation across a complex but humane narrative, without even hinting at the major secrets to come.

Takeaway: Touching novel of family secrets, surprise connections, and healing.

Comparable Titles: Barbara O’Neal’s In the Midnight Rain, Susan Wiggs’s Lisa Van Allen’s The Wishing Thread.

Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A