Walls of Glass

A Novel

People often come to appreciate things only after they lose them.

When seventeen-year-old Eileen is consigned to a life of wandering, she learns for the first time what a home is.

The law forbids her to go back home. Her mother, an anti-apartheid activist, is excommunicated. Eileen is left to fight for her very existence, while her mother's secrets pursue her, threatening to destroy everything she has succeeded in building.

In Soweto, Johannesburg's black suburb, a boy was arrested yesterday.

"He's only as old as you," Mom had said. Though I stood up straight, she was still a head taller than me. When she lowered her eyes to me, I saw surprise in them, as if she was saying, "How did you grow so suddenly? And how have you remained a child?"

"There are no children in Soweto," Mom once told me. "Someone whose life hangs by a thread is not a child. There is no such creature."

I remember feeling then that all of my fifteen years were stolen from that unknown boy who was thrown into jail, from all the children who are no longer children.

Forty years later and a continent away, Tovi Taylor is grappling with so many questions. Her father loses his public positions, doubts are raised about her mother-in-law's identity, and Rochel Efrat, her new friend, has plenty to say about everything. Are Tovi's idyllic home and family unraveling?

Walls of Glass. A compelling debut novel by Chaya Loberbaum