A Spool of Blue Thread

Linnie Mae Whitshank throws blue paint at the Bouton Road house in a moment of anger. Though her husband, Junior, considers all the ways to get rid of the paint, he admits to himself that “[really] the blue would never come off, not completely” (439). The paint is symbolic of the “common” stain of humble beginnings that both he and Linnie Mae hail from. Junior wants more than anything to erase his country origins, so the fact that the blue paint, which he considers a common color (Swedish Blue), will never be completely cleaned off the house is a personal defeat for him. It also symbolizes that people, can’t outrun their past.

The spool of blue thread, from which the book’s title takes its name, represents connection. After Abby Whitshank’s death, her son Denny looks for thread to repair his father’s shirt. The exact color of thread needed falls into his hands, unsettling him: “I almost imagined that she was handing it to me. Like some kind of, like, secret sign” (456). Denny suggests that his mother reached out to him from the afterlife as a symbol of forgiveness. Abby, therefore, represents a connection that’s threaded through her family’s lives, both in life and in death.