The Ghost in the Glass House

In the three years since her father’s death, twelve-year-old Clare has been dragged from hotel to hotel all over the world by her frenetically grieving mother to avoid returning to their home in New York. Their latest stop, a summer house by the sea, has a secret history surrounding the previous owners and a locked glass pavilion in the backyard. Although the stern housekeeper refuses to divulge what she knows, Clare discovers that the glass house is haunted by the ghost of a boy named Jack who has forgotten who he was in life. As Clare tries to uncover the truth about his past and perhaps find a way to contact her father, she realizes that she is falling in love with the invisible phantom. Clare is a refreshingly thoughtful heroine, a quiet, keen observer of others even as she harbors her own insecurities about growing up. While her mother finds solace in social gatherings and her peers experiment with adolescent romance, Clare is reluctant to cross the “boundaries of childhood”—just as Jack fears moving on to the afterlife. Wallace deftly uses the Spiritualist fervor of the 1920s period setting to populate her novel with characters who are paralyzed by ghosts of the past, both real and metaphorical, and demonstrates the need to balance honoring the past and living in the present. russell perry