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Summary and Reviews of Sweeping Up Glass by Carolyn Wall

Sweeping Up Glass by Carolyn Wall

Sweeping Up Glass

by Carolyn Wall
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (7):
  • Readers' Rating (40):
  • First Published:
  • Aug 10, 2008, 278 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Aug 2009, 336 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

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 Mountain–and Olivia is beginning to realize how much of her own bitter history she’s never understood: Her mother’s madness, building toward a fiery crescendo. Her daughter’s flight to California, leaving her to raise Will’m, her beloved grandson. And most of all, her town’s 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, she’ll ignite a conflict that will embroil an entire community–and change her own life in the most astonishing of ways.

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Reviews

BookBrowse Review

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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..continued

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(Reviewed by First Impressions Reviewers).

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Beyond the Book



Carolyn Wall describes Sweeping Up Glass as "fifty percent truth, and fifty percent based on fact. The other fifty percent (which speaks of my math skills) is flat made-up."

When I was born, we lived over a grocery store in Toronto. My father built crates in an alley for Canada Box, and sold meat pies from the basket of his bicycle. With my mother gone off to a small private hospital for shock treatments, we moved into rooms at the top of Gramma’s house. On Sunday evenings, Dad dismantled my crib, roped it to the top of the car, and threw all the baby things in back. Then he laid me on the seat beside him and drove around Toronto, looking for an aunt and uncle to take me. In a relative’s house, he’d set up my crib and ...

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Read-Alikes

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