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Product Info
Publisher: Viking
Author: Tracy Chevalier
ISBN: 9780525558279
Format: Hardcover
Historical fiction
The Glassmaker
by
Tracy Chevalier
The Glassmaker by
Tracy Chevalier
Reviews
"Travel across seven centuries with novelist Tracy Chevalier and a remarkable Glassmaker ... The Glassmaker conveys a vivid history lesson about a fascinating place and industry, animated through the lives and emotions of compelling characters."
Star Tribune
Summary
From the bestselling historical novelist, a rich, transporting story that follows a family of glassmakers from the height of Renaissance-era Italy to the present day.
It is 1486 and Venice is a wealthy, opulent center for trade. Orsola Rosso is the eldest daughter in a family of glassblowers on Murano, the island revered for the craft. As a woman, she is not meant to work with glass—but she has the hands for it, the heart, and a vision. When her father dies, she teaches herself to make glass beads in secret, and her work supports the Rosso family fortunes.
Skipping like a stone through the centuries, in a Venice where time moves as slowly as molten glass, we follow Orsola and her family as they live through creative triumph and heartbreaking loss, from a plague devastating Venice to Continental soldiers stripping its palazzos bare, from the domination of Murano and its maestros to the transformation of the city of trade into a city of tourists. In every era, the Rosso women ensure that their work, and their bonds, endure.
Chevalier is a master of her own craft, and The Glassmaker is as inventive as it is spellbinding: a mesmerizing portrait of a woman, a family, and a city as everlasting as their glass.