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Summary
Summary
"[A] triumph. Swanson is a name to be considered among the likes of Gillian Flynn, Chris Pavone, and Laura Lippman" ( Library Journal , starred review).
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Bookseller comes a gripping literary suspense novel set in the 1960s about a deeply troubled family and three women who will reveal its dark truths.
In the autumn of 1960, Angie Glass is living an idyllic life in her Wisconsin hometown. At twenty-one, she's married to charming, handsome Paul, and has just given birth to a baby boy. But one phone call changes her life forever.
When Paul's niece, Ruby, reports that her father, Henry, has committed suicide, and that her mother, Silja, is missing, Angie and Paul drop everything and fly to the small upstate town of Stonekill, New York to be by Ruby's side.
Angie thinks they're coming to the rescue of Paul's grief-stricken young niece, but Ruby is a composed and enigmatic seventeen-year-old who resists Angie's attempts to nurture her. As Angie learns more about the complicated Glass family, staying in Henry and Silja's eerie and ultra-modern house on the edge of the woods, she begins to question the very fabric of her own marriage.
Through Silja's flashbacks, Angie's discovery of astonishing truths, and Ruby's strategic dissection of her parents' state of affairs, a story of love, secrets, and ultimate betrayal is revealed.
Author Notes
Cynthia Swanson is the New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of The Bookseller . An Indie Next selection and the winner of the 2016 WILLA Award for Historical Fiction, The Bookseller has been translated into a dozen languages. Cynthia has published short fiction in numerous journals and been a Pushcart Prize nominee. She lives with her family in Denver, Colorado. The Glass Forest is her second novel.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Swanson follows her bestselling debut, The Bookseller, with a stunning suspense novel set in 1960. According to 17-year-old Ruby Glass, her father, Henry, poisoned himself after her mother, Silja, walked out on them. Henry's brother, Paul, and Paul's new bride, Angie, travel to Stonekill, N.Y., with their infant son in order to settle Henry's affairs and support their niece. Angie, who's 21, can't fathom how any woman could abandon her family and is determined to befriend and comfort Ruby, but Ruby keeps Angie at arm's length and seems unexpectedly composed. When the police reveal that Henry may have been murdered, and the locals start telling sordid stories about him and his relatives, Angie does some digging and realizes how little she knows about the Glasses-including Paul. Swanson uses exquisitely rendered characters and an intricately woven plot to explore the cultural and political fallout of WWII, as well as the changing role and limited rights of women in the mid-20th century. This intoxicating slow burn builds to a conclusion rife with shocking reveals. Agent: Susanna Einstein, Einstein Literary Management. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
In 1960, Angela Glass is living in Wisconsin, the happy young wife of handsome Paul, and the mother of baby boy PJ. Then her world turns upside down. Ruby, Angie and Paul's 17-year-old niece, calls saying that her father, Henry, Paul's older brother, is dead, presumably a suicide, and her mother, Silja, has run away. Angie insists that she and PJ accompany Paul to Ruby's house in the woods of upstate New York to comfort and assist Ruby at this difficult time. Flashbacks describe the marriage of Henry and Silja, and the change in its course after Henry returned from the war, badly wounded, in 1945. Then Henry stayed at home, caring for Ruby and doing odd jobs, while Silja had an increasingly responsible career, a pattern that put them at odds with their community and spawned secrets that surrounded the family. But those secrets are revealed to Angie gradually, in time for her to do what she must for herself and her son. A haunting novel from the author of The Bookseller (2015).--Leber, Michele Copyright 2017 Booklist
Kirkus Review
A young mother navigates the secrets her handsome husband seems to be hiding after his brother commits suicide in Swanson's (The Bookseller, 2015) second novel.It's 1960, and 21-year-old Angie Glass is deliriously happy with her handsome husband, Paul, and their 6-month-old son. Angie's idyllic Wisconsin existence is interrupted when she receives a phone call from Paul's 17-year-old niece, Ruby, who claims that her mother, Silja, is missing, and her father, Paul's brother, Henry, was found dead in the woods nearby. Angie insists on accompanying Paul to Ruby's home in Stonekill, New York, a modern glass structure that belies that darkness that has descended on the family. Ruby is not the emotional wreck Angie expected. In fact, she's not doing much talking at all, but she sure seems to be trying to play her Uncle Paul and Angie against each other. Mysteries abound: where exactly is Silja? Supposedly she left a note, but her whereabouts are a mystery, and who is the older man Ruby has been spending time with? Henry's death is officially ruled a suicide, but of course Swanson begins dropping hints early on that it might not be that simple, and nothing is what it seems. The story is told from the perspectives of Ruby, the Pollyannaish Angie, and Siljabut most of Silja's tale takes place in the 1940s and '50s after her quick courtship and marriage to Henry. Although the author does her best to capture the social upheaval and change in these time periods, especially in how the war changes Henry, the characters just aren't that interesting, and there's only so much a reader can take of Angie and Silja, and even young Ruby, enduring the controlling, moody Glass menuntil they don't. By then, readers may not care.More soapy than suspenseful. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Twenty-one-year-old Angie Glass can't quite get accustomed to the idea of herself as an adult, but here she is. It's 1960, she's newly married to the older, charming, but mysterious Paul, and she has a baby boy. Living on property inherited from her grandparents in her Wisconsin hometown, she's ready to settle into her new family life. One phone call disrupts her dream. When Paul's niece, Ruby, breaks shocking news of his brother's suicide and her mother's disappearance, Angie's life is upended. A journey to upstate New York to rescue Ruby leads to far more complications and revelations than Angie could have anticipated. In her follow-up to The Bookseller, Swanson demonstrates her signature trait: a consistent, superbly executed sense of knife-edge disquiet, just bordering on anxiety. She maintains a fast pace without sacrificing literary quality, and multiple characters are developed with unfolding disclosures without losing their individual connections to the reader. Verdict On the heels of a stunning debut, this outstanding psychological thriller is a triumph. Swanson is a name to be considered among the likes of Gillian Flynn, Chris Pavone, and Laura Lippman.-Julie Kane, Washington & Lee Lib., Lexington, VA © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
The Glass Forest 1 Angie Door County, Wisconsin 1960 The day started out clear and crisp--a perfect September morning with no foreboding of what was to come. After PJ woke from his nap, I bundled him into a sweater, stretchy knit pants, and a matching cap--hand-me-downs from my sister Dorrie's children. Holding the baby against my hip, I stepped outside the cottage. It had rained the night before, and I breathed in the sultry fragrance, familiar as the scent of my own skin, of swollen lake water and sparse Wisconsin woods. My feet crunched across our sand path over the unpaved road to North Bay; like all residents of North Bay Drive, Paul and I had created a path of sand across the gravel-and-oil road, to curtail oil sticking to our shoes. I made my way down the rickety wooden staircase to the bay, careful of the mud that always stuck to the stair treads after a hard rain. At the bottom, I squelched through the tall, mucky grasses to the edge of the water and with one hand turned over the lightweight canvas canoe my grandfather handcrafted decades ago. Over the weekend, Paul had fashioned a small wooden seat for PJ, padded and reclining, across the canoe's middle bench. I was eager to try it out. Humming softly, I fastened the baby with leather straps that Paul had hammered into each side of the bench. I was thinking about the night before. I remembered how rain had pelted the tin roof of the cottage, pounding into my ears as Paul and I rocked together in tangled sheets, our limbs entwined. At the end, I'd cried out Paul's name, my voice raised above the sound of raindrops lashing against the window panes. Afterward we were still, listening to the occasional rumble of thunder as the storm moved eastward over Lake Michigan. Gratitude--for my marriage, my life, my future--wrapped itself around my heart as securely as Paul's body encircled my own. Now, twelve hours later, my breath caught at the memory. I paddled onto the bay, which PJ and I had to ourselves, save for a gathering of ducks floating serenely near the shore and a pair of gulls farther out. All the gnats and most of the mosquitoes were gone for the season. Only the occasional dragonfly buzzed over the water, its wings shimmering purple and blue in the sunlight. I put up the paddle and let the canoe drift. Lulled by the gently rocking craft, PJ babbled cheerfully as he watched birds flying overhead. I looked up, shielding my eyes from the sun, and as I did, a burst of splashing water erupted to my right. I whipped my head and shoulders around in time to see a trout shooting out of the bay, sending ripples across the surface when it plunged back in. Pulled off balance by my sudden shift, I felt the canoe tipping sharply. PJ let out a wail. I twisted and saw the baby roll to the side and the top of his head touch the water. His shoulders and torso followed. The leather straps had come loose from the bench--Paul must not have hammered them in securely enough. I grappled forward and snatched the baby by his ankles just before he went fully underwater. The canoe tilted and I sat down hastily, grinding my hip into the bench as I restored myself upright. The baby wailed with surprise, his hair soaked, lake water dripping into his eyes and mingling with his tears. I hugged him to my chest and ran my fingers across his drenched head. "It's okay, my little one," I murmured. "You're safe." I kissed PJ's brow, tucking his head against my breast, and with my free hand crossed myself. Thank you, Virgin Mother, I silently prayed. Thank you for watching over us. The wooden paddle drifted nearby. Shaking, I stared at it. I snuggled the baby under my left arm, dunked my right forearm into the water, and propelled the canoe by hand until I reached the paddle. I retrieved it and tucked the baby more tightly against my body. Awkwardly, one-handed, I paddled toward the shore--graceless but steadfast. * * * I was just walking in the door when the telephone began to ring--the two short rings signifying the call coming over the party line was for my household. Still trembling, I slipped off my muddy galoshes. I dashed to the bathroom, wrapped the baby in a towel, and placed him on the davenport. I crossed the cottage's diminutive living room and picked up the telephone receiver on the desk, turning down the radio volume with my other hand; I'd neglected to shut off the radio before I went out on the bay. Throughout the morning on WDOR, the announcers had been discussing last night's presidential debate. They said that while Vice President Nixon came off favorably over the airwaves, those who'd watched the televised version felt Senator Kennedy won by a landslide. The first time I heard those words, earlier that morning, I'd raised my fist in a little cheer. In less than two months, I would be voting in my first presidential election. The senator from Massachusetts had my full support. "Aunt Angie?" The female voice on the other end of the line was unfamiliar. I have more than a dozen nieces and nephews--I'm the youngest of six, and all my siblings have several children apiece--but only a handful of those children were old enough to make telephone calls. And of those few, none had a mature voice like this. Not quite the intonation of an adult, but surely not a child, either. Only one person might call me aunt in that type of voice. "Ruby?" I asked. "Is that you? Are you all right?" There was no answer. I glanced across the room, watching PJ burble to himself as he swatted the loose threads on a sofa pillow. Considering what he'd been through on the bay, PJ was terrifically calm. How lucky I was to have such an agreeable baby, when all I heard from my sisters and sisters-in-law were gripes about colic and crankiness. "We got us a winner," Paul said whenever I marveled at this. "The boy's a winner, Angel." And I would smile, both at his words and his pet name for me. Angel. There was an almost inaudible sound on the line--not spoken words and not quite the clearing of a throat. I hoped it was Ruby, but I suspected it was old Mrs. Bates from down the road, using the party line to snare gossip like catching a weasel in a baited live trap. "Ruby?" I said again. "Are you there? Are you all right?" "No," Ruby answered in that restrained voice of hers, devoid of emotion and cool as the water in the bay. "No, Aunt Angie, I am not all right." There was another pause, and then Ruby said, "Aunt Angie, my father is dead. And my mother has run away." Excerpted from The Glass Forest by Cynthia Swanson All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.