When, at the age of twenty-six, Elizabeth Graver won the prestigious Drue Heinz Literature Prize for her debut collection of short stories, Have You Seen Me?, Richard Ford hailed the stories as "subtle, illuminating, and exquisitely pretty. They seem to have wisdom at their hearts. Ms. Graver seems to be in full control of remarkable talent".Now, in Unravelling, Elizabeth Graver has turned that remarkable talent to a rich, evocative novel set in nineteenth-century New England, following the fortunes and misfortunes of a headstrong woman named Aimee Slater. Aimee has always dreamed of a life beyond the small New Hampshire farm her family owns. When, against her mother's wishes, she goes off at the age of fifteen to work in the city of Spindles -- the factory town of Lowell, Massachusetts -- she opens a rift between herself and her mother that feels, in her own words, like "an impossible distance". How she ultimately bridges that distance upon returning home -- in part through finding a husband in a former teacher and a surrogate daughter in a village orphan -- makes for a poignant, unforgettable tale, and marks the novelistic debu.