The Sweetgum Knit Lit Society
Read The Sweetgum Knit Lit Society Online
Authors: Beth Pattillo
Praise for
The Sweetgum Knit Lit Society
“Like Debbie Macomber, Beth Pattillo spins warm, compelling stories out of the lives of everyday people. Five women and a girl gather regularly at the Sweetgum Christian Church to knit, read, and talk, and in the process they confront their own secrets, dreams and challenges. I hope this is the first of a series so I can revisit the Knit Lit Society again and again!”
—M
ARY
J
O
P
UTNEY
, author of
A Distant Magic
“Jan Karon meets Jodi Piccoult.
The Sweetgum Knit Lit Society
is an intriguing look into the minds and hearts of a diverse group of women. This is a compelling and heartwarming story full of love and grace you don’t want to miss!”
—J
ULIE
L. C
ANNON
, author of
The Romance
Readers’ Book Club
“Thank you, Beth Pattillo, for ‘casting on’ characters who so vividly reveal our human failing to render and receive love, which, as you so artfully depict, we too often withhold, delay, rush, misdirect, or hide from. But thank you most of all for showing us how the smallest of tentative steps we take toward each other can help us to find
our
true selves, and therefore lead us closer to
God’s
perfect love.”
—C
HARLENE
A
NN
B
AUMBICH
, speaker, humorist, author of the Welcome to Partonville series
“I could almost hear the clack of knitting needles as I read through the pages of
The Sweetgum Knit Lit Society
. Beth Pattillo’s motley group of true-to-life characters deal with life’s struggles and share a camaraderie that few take the time to discover in this heartwarming yarn of true friendship. A must read!”
—D
IANN
H
UNT
, author of
For Better or For Worse
T
HE
S
WEETGUM
K
NIT
L
IT
S
OCIETY
P
UBLISHED BY
W
ATERBROOK
P
RESS
12265 Oracle Boulevard, Suite 200
Colorado Springs, Colorado 80921
A division of Random House Inc
.
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House.
All rights reserved.
The characters and events in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental.
Copyright © 2008 by Beth Pattillo
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
W
ATER
B
ROOK
and its deer design logo are registered trademarks of WaterBrook Press, a division of Random House Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pattillo, Beth.
The Sweetgum Knit Lit Society : a novel / Beth Pattillo.—1st ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-49906-6
1. Knitters (Persons)—Fiction. 2. Knitting—Fiction. 3. Book clubs (Discussion groups)—Fiction. 4. Women—Southern States—Fiction. 5. Female friendship—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3616.A925S94 2008
813′.6—dc22
2007050350
v3.1
For Randy,
for everything
Over the top of her reading glasses, Eugenie Pierce eyed the teenage girl sprawled across two chairs at the long table in the Sweetgum Public Library’s reading area. Late afternoon sunlight spilled through the tall windows and fell like a spotlight on the youthful offender. The city council could make noises about forcing Eugenie to retire in six months’ time, but that didn’t mean she would neglect her library in the interim. Not that it was her library personally. It belonged to the good citizens of Sweetgum, Tennessee. But the library had been in her care for almost forty years, and no teenager since the Nixon administration had put his or her feet anywhere but on the floor, where they belonged.
Eugenie moved a step closer to the girl and continued to stare. Usually her narrowed gaze moved mountains—or at least wayward adolescent limbs. But this child was not so
easily motivated. Another two steps, sensible pumps tapping against the tile floor, and now Eugenie stood within three feet of the girl.
“Ahem.” She resorted to clearing her throat. Still the girl did not respond. Eugenie moved closer. She tapped the table in front of the girl and cleared her throat again.
“What?” The girl looked up, rolled her eyes, and slumped even lower. She had those white wires hanging from her ears, which meant she wasn’t reading but listening to that awful rap music. The girl finally pulled one of the buds from her ear. “I said, ‘What?’ ”
“Please take your feet off the chair,” Eugenie replied, snipping each word. She lowered her glasses to the tip of her nose and looked pointedly at the girl’s cheap plastic flip-flops and black-lacquered toenails. True, none of the furniture in the Sweetgum Public Library was anywhere near new, but every stick of it was in pristine condition.
“I’m not hurting anything.” The girl spoke too loudly because of the remaining bud wedged in her right ear.
“Shh. You’re disturbing the other patrons.”
Granted, the only other people in the library at the moment were Mr. and Mrs. Hornbuckle, who couldn’t hear a train wreck between them, but it was the principle of the thing that mattered. A library was a holy place, like church, and you wouldn’t find people sitting in a house of worship with their feet on the pews and headphones jammed in their ears. At least not in Sweetgum.
The girl looked around, saw the Hornbuckles, and laughed. “You’d have to shoot off a cannon to disturb them.”
Eugenie sighed. She wasn’t up for this. Maybe Homer Flint and his cronies were right. Maybe it truly was time for her to retire. She’d had the same conversation with four decades’ worth of teenagers. Her track record, of course, spoke for itself. She’d steered any number of wayward youth onto the straight and narrow, although lately not as many as she used to.
“Library patrons do not put their feet in the chairs. And please turn down the volume on your CD player. Others may not share your taste in music.”
The girl bristled. “It’s an iPod.”
“A what?”
“An iPod. Not a CD player.” The scorn in her voice shouldn’t have bothered Eugenie. But she was tired of people who treated her as if she was an ignorant civil servant instead of a well-educated woman with a master’s degree in library science.
And then she saw the book lying on the table in front of the girl.
Knitting for Beginners
.
Eugenie eyed the girl again. “Do you knit?” she asked in a slightly kinder tone. Eugenie was a firm believer in productive activities, and if this girl was a knitter, perhaps she wasn’t such a lost cause after all.
“Huh?” Finally, the girl removed the remaining bud from her other ear. “What’d you say?”
“Are you a knitter?” Eugenie gestured toward the book on the table.
The girl stiffened, her mouth tightening as if she’d bitten into a lemon. “Why do you care?”
“Well, if you knit,” Eugenie said patiently, “you might be interested in a group that meets the third Friday of every month at the Christian church. The Sweetgum Knit Lit Society. All knitters are welcome.” Although she silently wondered just how welcome the other women would make this grungy girl feel. The ties that bound the group were tenuous at best, yet Eugenie managed to hold them together by sheer dint of will.
The girl shoved the book away. “I was just looking at it.” The angry defensiveness of the girl’s reply caught Eugenie off guard.
“I merely intended to—” But she stopped herself before she could utter the fateful word.
Help. I merely intended to help
. The unfinished sentence lay between them, unspoken but entirely present. The girl’s blue eyes narrowed in her round face. She shoved a hank of dirty blond hair off her forehead with one hand. “I don’t need your help.”
And then Eugenie heard the telltale rustle of paper from underneath the table.
“What’s that?”
More rustling. The girl’s face turned red. “Nothing.”
Eugenie reached out and took the knitting book. With practiced efficiency, she flipped through the pages. She saw immediately where the little heathen had defaced
Knitting for Beginners
.
“You’ve ruined it.” Disgusted by the jagged edges where the pages had been ripped from the binding, Eugenie snapped the book closed. “You’ll pay to replace it.”