What do we do when life lurches out of balance? How can we reconnect to one another and to what''s sustaining, when evil and catastrophe seem inescapable?

These questions lie at the heart of Stitches, Anne Lamott''s follow-up to her New York Times-bestselling work, Help, Thanks, Wow. In this book, she explores how we find meaning and peace in these loud and frantic times; where we start again after personal and public devastation; how we recapture wholeness after loss; and how we locate our true identities in this frazzled age. We begin, Lamott says, by collecting the ripped sheets of our emotional and spiritual fabric and sewing them back together - one stitch at a time.

It''s in these stitches that the quilt of life begins, and embedded in them are strength, warmth, humour and humanity.