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"You can always start again," Kate Robinson's mother once told her, "all it takes is a new thread." Overwhelmed by heartbreak and loss, the struggling twenty-six-year-old fashion designer follows her mother's advice and flees to her ancestral homeland of Ireland, hoping to break free of old patterns and reinvent herself.
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When she arrives on the west coast, in the fading seaside hamlet of Glenmara, Kate quickly develops a bond with members of the local lace-making society: recently widowed Bernie; Aileen, estranged from her teenage daughter; Moira, caught in an abusive relationship; Oona, bearing the scars of breast cancer; and Colleen, worried about her fisherman husband, lost at sea. Under Glenmara's spell, Kate finds the inspiration that has eluded her, and soon she and the lace makers are creating a line of exquisite lingerie. The circle also offers them something more: the strength to face long-denied desires and fears. But not everyone welcomes Kate, and a series of unexpected events threatens to unravel everything the women have worked so hard for. . . . 
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