When Jane Alison was a child, her family met another that
seemed like its mirror: a father in the Foreign Service, a
beautiful mother, and two little girls. The youngest girls from
each family—one of them Jane—even shared a birthday.
With so much in common, the two families became almost instantly
inseparable. Within months, affairs had ignited between the adults,
and before long the pairs had exchanged partners—divorced,
remarried, and moved on. As if in a cataclysm of nature, two
families were ripped asunder, and two new ones were formed. Two
pairs of girls were left in shock, a “silent, numb shock, like a
crack inside stone, not enough to split it but inside, silently
fissuring.” And Jane and her stepsister were thrown into a state of
silent combat for the affections of their absent fathers—a contest
that, for one of them at least, would prove tragic.
Readers drawn to The Glass Castle will be moved by Alison’s
stunning emotional insight as she recounts the intimate
devastations of family betrayal.