Bestselling novelist Tracy Chevalier returns to the library to talk about her newest novel. The Glassmaker is a rich, transporting story that follows a family of glassmakers from the height of Renaissance-era Italy to the present day. Kirkus praises Chevalier’s latest effort in a starred review saying “history flows like molten glass in this stunning novel that borders on fantasy.”

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.

Tracy Chevalier is the New York Times bestselling author of ten previous novels, including Girl with a Pearl Earring, which has been translated into forty-five languages and made into an Oscar-nominated film, a play, and an opera.

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