When Thea Tamborella returns to New Orleans after a 10-year absence, she finds a city gripped by fear. The privileged white socialites of her private-school days pack guns to fancy dinner parties and spend their free time in paramilitary patrols. The black gardeners, maids and cooks who work days in the mansions of the elite Garden District return each evening to housing projects wracked by poverty, drugs and gang violence. The city’s haves and have-nots glare at each other across a yawning racial divide as fear turns to hate and an us-against-them mentality. Wiltz probes to the roots of violence, finding victims on both sides. [Inspired by real events], Glass House gives no easy answers to the complex questions of race relations.

 

“. . . A clear-eyed, compassionate novel.”—Orlando Sentinel

 

“There are no villains here, only fearful and cornered people who flail at the darkness that surrounds them. . . . I have never read a better depiction of the tormented American heart.”—James Lee Burke

 

“It is the painful and unflinching honesty with which Wiltz confronts the issue of crime that gives her novel its strength and power. . . . A novel that needs to be read on both sides of Convent Street.”—New York Times Book Review

 

“There’s romance in this book as well, [and] Wiltz’s expertly paced story sustains real entertainment while causing readers to search their hearts for their own hidden versions of Convent Street.”—San Francisco Chronicle