Tracy Chevalier, author of The Glassmaker

Join us for a special evening featuring Tracy Chevalier, author of The Glassmaker. Tracy Chevalier is the bestselling author of ten previous novels, including Girl with a Pearl Earring, which has been translated into 45 languages and made into an Oscar-nominated film, a play, and an opera. This event will take place in person at Schlitz Audubon and is co-sponsored by Boswell Book Company.

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.

From Geraldine Brooks, author of Horse: “This charming fable is at once a love story that skips through six centuries, and also a love song to the timeless craft of glassmaking. Chevalier probes the fierce rivalries and enduring loyalties of Murano’s glass dynasties, capturing the roar of the furnace, the sweat on the skin, and the glittering beauty of Venetian glass.”

Tickets cost $34 plus tax and ticket fee and include a hardcover copy of The Glassmaker, to be picked up at the event.

Purchase ticket through Eventbrite.