Review and Tour: The Christmas Glass by Marci Alborghetti

The Christmas Glass: A Novel
by Marci Alborghetti
GuidepostsBooks (October 1, 2009) ~ 304 pages
Fiction / Christian Fiction / Christmas

Edition Reviewed: Hardback - Review copy received courtesy of the publisher, many thanks to both the author, the publisher and CFBA Blog Alliance for coordinating the tour and sending me a copy to review!

Perfect for : Personal Use, Book Club

My Thoughts: I found The Christmas Glass to be a very interesting and insightful look into a fictional family that is brought together because of 12 delicately blown glass nativity ornaments that were a cherished possession of Anna, an Italian widow running an orphanage that also houses Jewish children during the war in 1940. Out of fear that the ornaments will be destroyed, she sends them to a cousin who later moves to America. Over the years, the ornaments make their way to twelve different family members.

By 2000, Anna's cousin Filomena fears that the family has become too remote and that there isn't hope of getting everyone together, so she requests that each person who has one of the ornaments return it in person, which could have disastrous results within the dysfunctional family.

The beginning of the book takes a look at Anna's life, and the rest of the book is dedicated to exploring the relationships of the current possessors of the ornaments, one person and ornament per chapter.

I found it very interesting to watch as the lives and problems of different people were brought to the forefront and explored, finding that they are connected and I loved that this Christmas story is just as heart-warming as I had hoped.

This week, the

Christian Fiction Blog Alliance

is introducing

The Christmas Glass

GuidepostsBooks (October 1, 2009)

by

Marci Alborghetti
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Marci Alborghetti has been writing only slightly longer than she's been reading. In seventh grade she received her first writing prize for a zany Halloween story. The prize? A five dollar gift certificate to a local bookstore. She was hooked. The Christmas Glass is her fourteenth book, and she is currently at work on a sequel as well as a non-fiction book about service. Some of her other books include: Prayer Power: How to Pray When You Think You Can’t, A Season in the South and Twelve Strong Women of God.

She and her husband, Charlie Duffy, live in New London, Connecticut and the San Francisco Bay area. While in New London she facilitates the Saint James Literary Club.

ABOUT THE BOOK

In the tradition of The Christmas Shoes and A Christmas on Jane Street, the heartwarming story of The Christmas Glass shows how, today as always, the Christmas miracle works its wonders in the human heart.

In the early days of World War II in Italy, Anna, a young widow who runs a small orphanage, carefully wraps her most cherished possessions -- a dozen hand-blown, German-made, Christmas ornaments, handed down by her mother -- and sends them to a cousin she hasn't seen in years.

Anna is distressed to part with her only tangible reminder of her mother, but she worries that the ornaments will be lost or destroyed in the war, especially now that her orphanage has begun to secretly shelter Jewish children. Anna's young cousin Filomena is married with two-year-old twins when she receives the box of precious Christmas glass.

After the war, Filomena emigrates to America, where the precious ornaments are passed down through the generations. After more than forty years, twelve people come to possess a piece of Christmas glass, some intimately connected by family bonds, some connected only through the history of the ornaments.

As Christmas Day approaches, readers join each character in a journey of laughter and tears, fractures and healings, as Filomena, now an eighty-four-year-old great-grandmother, brings them all to what will be either a wondrous reunion or a disaster that may shatter them all like the precious glass they cherish.

If you would like to read the first chapter of The Christmas Glass, go HERE