Description
Violet Speedwell, mourning for both her fiancé and her brother and regarded by society as a ‘surplus
woman’ unlikely to marry, resolves to escape her suffocating mother and strike out alone.
A new life awaits her in Winchester. Yes, it is one of draughty boarding-houses and sidelong glances
at her naked ring finger from younger colleagues; but it is also a life gleaming with independence and
opportunity. Violet falls in with the broderers, a disparate group of women charged with embroidering
kneelers for the Cathedral, and is soon entwined in their lives and their secrets. As the almost
unthinkable threat of a second Great War appears on the horizon Violet collects a few secrets of her
own that could just change everything…
Warm, vivid and beautifully orchestrated, A Single Thread reveals one of our finest modern writers at
the peak of her powers.