Sweeping Up Glass: Summary and book reviews of Sweeping Up Glass by Carolyn Wall, plus links to an excerpt from Sweeping Up Glass and a biography of Carolyn Wall.
Sweeping Up Glass
by
Carolyn Wall
Hardcover: Aug 2008,
278 pages.
Paperback: Aug 2009,
336 pages.
Destined to be a classic, Sweeping Up Glass is a tough and tender novel of love, race, and justice, and a ferocious, unflinching look at the power of family.
Olivia Harker Cross owns a strip of mountain in Pope County, Kentucky, a land where whites and blacks eke out a living in separate, tattered kingdoms and where silver-faced wolves howl in the night. But someone is killing the wolves of Big Foley Mountainand Olivia is beginning to realize how much of her own bitter history shes never understood: Her mothers madness, building toward a fiery crescendo. Her daughters flight to California, leaving her to raise Willm, her beloved grandson. And most of all, her towns fear, for Olivia has real and dangerous enemies.
Now this proud, lonely woman will face her mother and daughter, her neighbors and the wolf hunters of Big Foley Mountain. And when she does, shell ignite a conflict that will embroil an entire communityand change her own life in the most astonishing of ways.
Book Reviews
BookBrowse - BookBrowse First Impression Reviewers Fifty-three BookBrowse members reviewed this book for "First Impressions", with forty-seven rating it 4 or 5 out of 5 stars – one of our highest ratings to date. This is what they say… Sweeping Up Glass definitely 'swept me up' from the very first page (Linda G)... You will fall in love with the unusual cast of characters, share their loves, losses and pain, and eventually be swept into a fast paced race to a conclusion that you cannot possibly have imagined (Beth P). It's a great choice for book clubs, lots of 'hidden secrets' and issues for discussion (Linda G). Read all the First Impressions Reviews Full Review (members only, 1344 words).
Kirkus Reviews
Wall gives her heroine a powerful voice in this haunting debut.
Booklist
This debut novel does so much more than traditional, tightly focused mysteries. It has a powerfully, sometimes uncomfortably, realized setting; characters who seem drawn from life; and a wide-ranging plot, bursting with complications ... A gripping story and a truly original voice.
Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. As the action moves inexorably to its explosive conclusion, Olivia must come to grips with past betrayals, thereby earning a second chance at love, redemption and long overdue justice.
Library Journal
Starred Review. The suspense is gripping, the danger is very real, and the reader gets caught up in Wall's powerful, moving debut. Highly recommended for all collections.
O, The Oprah Magazine
Haunting, lyrical, entirely absorbing, Sweeping Up Glass deserves a place on the shelf next to classics like True Grit and To Kill A Mockingbird. Carolyn Wall is a brilliant storyteller and this book is a wonderful read
The Boston Globe
This extraordinary debut novel, both a "what happened" and a "whodunit," explores survival and the guilt that can accompany it. The writing is filled with arresting images, bitter humor, and characters with palpable physical presence. The fresh voice of that clear-eyed narrator reminded me of Scout in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. I literally could not put it down.
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