Glassworks -- Olivia Wolfgang-Smith, Hardcover

A gorgeously written and irresistibly intimate queer novel that follows one family across four generations to explore legacy and identity in all its forms.

A Goodreads Buzziest Debut Novel of 2023

In 1910, Agnes Carter makes the wrong choice in marriage. After years as an independent woman of fortune, influential with the board of a prominent university because of her financial donations, she is now subject to the whims of an abusive, spendthrift husband. But when Bohemian naturalist and glassblower Ignace Novak reignites Agnes's passion for science, Agnes begins to imagine a different life, and she sets her mind to getting it.

Agnes's desperate actions breed secrecy, and the resulting silence echoes into the future. Her son, Edward, wants to be a man of faith but struggles with the complexities of the mortal world while apprenticing at a
stained-glass studio.

In 1986, Edward's child, Novak-just Novak-is an acrobatic window washer cleaning Manhattan high-rises, who gets caught up in the plight of Cecily, a small town girl remade as a gender-bending Broadway ingénue.

And in 2015, Cecily's daughter Flip-a burned-out stoner trapped in a bureaucratic job firing cremains into keepsake glass ornaments-resolves to break the cycle of inherited secrets, reaching back through the generations in search of a family legacy that feels true.

For readers of Mary Beth Keane, Min Jin Lee, and Rebecca Makkai, Glassworks is "an era-spanning, family and chosen-family following, marvel of a debut." (CJ Hauser, author of FAMILY OF ORIGIN)

Author: Olivia Wolfgang-Smith
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 05/16/2023
Pages: 368
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.47lbs
Size: 9.54h x 6.38w x 1.28d
ISBN: 9781635578775

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 03/20/2023
Kirkus Reviews 04/01/2023
Booklist 04/15/2023 pg. 20
Foreword 04/27/2023

About the Author
Olivia Wolfgang-Smith's fiction has appeared in Salamander, Ninth Letter, The Common, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida State University. She originally hails from Rhode Island and lives in Brooklyn with her spouse. Glassworks is her first novel.