The latest book from Tracy Chevalier, author of 11 novels, including the bestselling Girl with a Pearl Earring, tells the captivating story of Orsola Rosso, whom we first encounter in 1486 as a young girl on Murano, the glassmakers’ island in the Venetian lagoon. Within a few pages, her father, the maestro at the family’s workshop, is dramatically killed by a shard of glass flying ‘like a hot dart straight into his neck’. Orsola’s lazy, impetuous brother Marco, less skilful than their father, must take over, but orders soon begin to dwindle. How will Orsola help her family recover and prosper?
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Glassmaking is traditionally a male concern, but the girl finds her way into it thanks to Maria Barovier, the real-life inventor of Rosetta beads, who, in the novel, advises Orsola to diversify into glass beads: ‘They are inconsequential, and women can make them because of that.
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