The Glass Forest

Starred review from November 20, 2017
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.

December 1, 2017
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 Silja--but 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 men...until they don't. By then, readers may not care.More soapy than suspenseful.

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December 1, 2017
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).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)