“If, as Lee Martin has said, good writing is an attempt at salvation, with The Glassmaker’s Wife, his deliverance is assured."
—ANGEL KHOURY, author of Between Tides
Coming December 6, 2022
About Lee
Lee Martin is the Pulitzer Prize Finalist author of The Bright Forever. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in such places as Harper’s, Ms., The Best American Essays, The Best American Mystery Stories, Creative Nonfiction, The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, among others. He is the winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council. A native Midwesterner, he teaches in the MFA program at The Ohio State University.
About The Glassmaker's Wife
In August of 1844, a man named Leonard Reed takes violently ill at his home near Heathsville, Illinois, and four days later he is dead.
The cause? Arsenic poisoning.
The suspect? His wife, Betsey.
The chief witnesses against her? A hired girl, Eveline Deal, and the local apothecary, James Logan. The evidence? Eveline claims she saw Betsey put a pinch of white powder in Leonard’s coffee.
Also by Lee
Praise for Lee
“Martin has written a not-to-be-missed masterwork..."
—BOOKLIST Starred Review, on The Mutual UFO Network
“Lee Martin has long been one of my favorite writers of fiction and memoir, and now he's one of my favorite writers of advice about the writer's craft. Everyone who writes, or wants to, should read this wise and inspiring book."
—DAVID JAUSS, author of On Writing Fiction, on Telling Stories
“. . .Mr. Martin is a top-notch craftsman. . ."
—THE NEW YORK TIMES, on Break the Skin
“Written in the clearest prose, working back and forth over its complex story, and told in the dark, desperate, vivid voices of its various speakers, [The Bright Forever] holds you spellbound to the end, to its final, sad revelations."
—KENT HARUF, author of Eventide and Plainsong, on The Bright Forever
Latest Blog Post
In 1845 near where I grew up in southeastern Illinois, a woman named Betsey Reed stood trial, accused of murdering her husband by poisoning him with arsenic. This is the factual basis for my new novel, The Glassmaker’s Wife, whose publication date is this Tuesday. On Thursday December 8 at 6pm, Eastern time, I’ll be…