Threadbare recounts the story of Tillie, an innocent but tenacious young girl who chooses to marry Abe, a lonely widower, rather than follow her farming community north as urban development transforms rural Harlem. Convinced Abe will help her attend high school on the Lower East Side, Tillie faces a rude awakening amidst the filth and disease of the tenements. Through the following decades, she turns her energy and intelligence...