-
Access Our
Best Book Club
Books of 2025!
Summary | Excerpt | Reading Guide | Reviews | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
An unforgettable story of trust and betrayal, marriage and attraction, set in the 1920s.
It is a house on the beach. Honora doesn't mind renting--despite its age and all its flaws, the old house is the perfect place for a new marriage. She and Sexton throw themselves into fixing it up, just as they throw themselves into their new life together. Each morning, Honora collects sea glass washed up on the shore, each piece carrying a different story in its muted hues.
Sexton finds a way to buy the house, but his timing is perfectly wrong. The economy takes a sickening crash, and as financial pressures mount, Honora begins to see how little she knows this man she has married--and to realize just how threatening the world outside her front door can be.
Like those translucent shards that Honora finds on the beach, Sea Glass is layered with the textures, colors, and voices of another time. There is Vivian, an irreverent Boston socialite who becomes Honora's closest friend even as she rejects every form of convention. McDermott, a man who works in a nearby mill, presses Honora's deepest notions of trust--even as he embroils her in a dangerous dispute. And there's Francis, a boy whose openness becomes the bond that holds these people together as their world is flying apart.
Reviewers and readers everywhere have admired Anita Shreve's ability to create a "literary novel of the caliber and craft of Edith Wharton or Henry James" (Baltimore Sun). Sea Glass is an unforgettable story of trust and betrayal, marriage and attraction, from one of the most persuasive, farseeing, and deeply engaging writers of our time.
If you liked Sea Glass, try these:
by Laura Moriarty
Published 2013
A captivating novel about the woman who chaperoned an irreverent Louise Brooks to New York City in 1922, and the summer that would change them both.
by Alice Hoffman
Published 2005
Through these interconnected narratives more than a dozen men and women learn how love transforms us and how it is the one lasting element in our lives.
.gif)