The novel tells the intersecting stories of several generations of women who together are part of the same quilting circle in the fictional town of Grasse, California.
The novel was made into a movie of the same name in 1995 directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse and starring Winona Ryder as Finn Dodd.
Glady Joe was married to Arthur Cleary, but as the years wore on they discovered that they had more of a platonic friendship and the two stopped having sex.
When she is 17 and diving at a public pool Sophia Darling is spotted by Preston Richards, a young college student.
Preston believes that he has fallen in love with her and tells Sophia he wants to be a geologist while she dreams of travelling with him and swimming all around the world.
However Sophia is impregnated after her first sexual encounter and the two settle down in Grasse and both have unhappy lives, never able to travel the way they wanted to.
The couple have three children; Duff, who wants to go to school and have a career, Preston junior who is very close to his mother, and Edie, who, when she is 16 also conceives a child.
When the couple moved to Grasse, Howell eventually retired and stayed at home and while Constance was initially annoyed, she later came to enjoy this period of their life.
Though the entire quilting circle believes they are having an affair they do not, however one night as Dean is going home he turns on his car radio and hears the song String of Pearls and dances with Constance in the street, whereas she realizes she misses physical affection and backs away from Dean for a brief period.
Em Reed is eaten up by jealousy believing that Constance is having an affair with her husband Dean though her friends in the quilting circle try to reassure her.
Unbeknownst to them Dean, who is a painter, repeatedly had affairs throughout their marriage, at first with one of the students at the community college where he taught and then with some other women.
Jack meanwhile begins sleeping outdoors as his son being at war is giving him residual PTSD.
Laury goes MIA and Jack tells Corrina he hopes that he is not taken prisoner as that would be the worse thing.
Anna Neale is a mixed-race child of black and white parentage who is raised by her aunt Pauline who works as a domestic for a wealthy couple during the 1930s.
She eventually caves when Anna is a teenager as she wants to buy her a telescope to foster her interest in astronomy.