The Sisters Antipodes

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 familyone of them Janeeven 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 partnersdivorced, 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 fathersa contest that, for one of them at least, would prove tragic. Readers drawn toThe Glass Castlewill be moved by Alison's stunning emotional insight as she recounts the intimate devastations of family betrayal.

JANE ALISON is the author of three novels, The Love-Artist, The Marriage of the Sea, and Natives and Exotics. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Miami.