by Carolyn Wall
On Sunday evenings, Dad dismantled my crib, roped it to the top of the car, and threw all the baby things in back. Then he laid me on the seat beside him and drove around Toronto, looking for an aunt and uncle to take me. In a relative’s house, he’d set up my crib and kiss me good-bye.
To help support us, and to pay the doctor and hospital bills, he worked three nights a week building radios and record players for RCA Victor. He visited my mother in the hospital and took a Wednesday-night electronics class in the back room of a Chinese restaurant.
After work on Fridays, he’d come to me, dismantle my crib, tie it to the car, toss in my stuff, and drive us home. The next Sunday night, we began again.
My poor aunts must have grown terribly weary of me, sometimes calling Dad to “come and get this kid.”
“No matter,” he once told me. “When Gramma saw you coming, she’d open her arms wide.”
Thus were born Olivia and Will’m. Writing love for grandchildren was a given, and I’m sure I’m not finished. Because I did not want to bore the reader, I wrote what I hope are unique relationships between characters. Some-thing basic happens when two people are in a room together, even if they have not yet met. As each character’s face, name, and trouble spilled from my fingers, I knew the possibilities were endless.
If there ever is a sequel to Sweeping Up Glass, Olivia will feel deeper ties to earth, sky, and water. And, had there been an epilogue to the epilogue, surely Will’m’s connections to his mother and grandmother would have impacted the ways in which he raised his own children.
From the beginning, Olivia ached to show readers that when a thing seems to be solidly black and white, maybe it isn’t. And that moment by moment, she chose her actions and who she wanted to be. I opted for this title because, in the face of tragedy, Olivia reached for her dustpan.
As for picking Kentucky—why does any place speak to us? I wanted to set my people down in a community that was close and passionate and persecuted, and somewhere along the way I’d fallen in love with Kentucky’s mountains and their stories. In the saddest places, I saw dignity. And somewhere—I can’t remember the exact spot—I heard music.
My children and their offspring are far more to me than just my blood and bone. The real Ida gave me her creativity and stubbornness. She passed on two months after Sweeping Up Glass was sold, never knowing it existed. In its pages, I don’t think she’d have recognized herself. Still, she worked crossword puzzles in the newspaper with a pen until six weeks before she died. Not much got past her.
My father was a fine speaker. Guests would say “Put on the kettle, Frank, and tell us a story.”
Making up tales—for which I was spanked as a child—is now the axis on which my world turns. May that happen to us all.
Know this: Sweeping Up Glass is fifty percent truth, and fifty percent based on fact. The other fifty percent (which speaks of my math skills) is flat made-up.
Questions and Topics
for Discussion
1. The wolves provide a connection to the mountain, and therefore to Olivia’s past. What in nature connects you to where you live?
2. How do you think you would react if you discovered a massive, life-changing secret?
3. Olivia discovers that her hometown is a hotbed of racist hatred. Have you ever discovered something awful about the place that you grew up? How did you react?
4. Are the people who kept Olivia’s secret from her truly her friends? Do you believe they genuinely had her best interests at heart?
5. The last paragraph of the book finds Olivia contemplating that “in Aurora, there’s still division between coloreds and whites. I’m equally to blame.” Do you think that Olivia is partly to blame for this division? How or why not? Do you agree with Olivia’s assessment that “It’s not that I pretended—I just didn’t see”?
6. How much do you think Wing knew about the Cott’ners? If you believe that he knew about the lynchings, do you think that makes him as culpable as those who carried them out?
7. Was Olivia right to prevent Pauline from taking Will’m with her back to California? Was Will’m safer going back to the uncertainty of Hollywood with his mother, or staying on the mountain with Olivia?
8. Sweeping Up Glass examines segregation enforced by society, but also voluntary segregation from society. Can you see parallels to today in how people can segregate themselves either as individuals or as a community? What goals can hope to be achieved through such self-segregation?
9. Do you believe that there is redemption for Tate? Does keeping the books and leading Olivia to them redeem him for his actions?
10. For letting Olivia grow up believing what she did, is Tate as much an antagonist to Olivia as Alton Phelps?
11. Do you think Ida knows what she does? Do you see her as being in control of her actions? Can you see a parallel in your own life of someone who appears to be out of control, but may know exactly what she is doing?
12. The characters of Will’m and Tate are viewed as being universally “good,” whereas the Phelps brothers are viewed as being universally “evil.” Do you think it is that clear-cut in the story? In real life, are people ever one or the other?
About the Author
As artist-in-residence for the Oklahoma Arts Council, Carolyn Wall has taught creative writing to more than 4,000 children in her home state of Oklahoma. She operates a national prison-writing program, and authored the only literary book written on the Oklahoma City bombing. Her awards include two Crème-de-la-Crème awards from the Oklahoma Writers Federation Inc. and one from the Kansas State Writers. Sweeping Up Glass is her first novel; she is at work on her second, The Coffin Maker.
Sweeping Up Glass is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2008, 2009 by Carolyn D. Wall
Reading group guide copyright © 2009 by Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Delta, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
DELTA is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc. RANDOM HOUSE READER’S CIRCLE & DESIGN is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.
Title page art from an original photograph by Kinsey Christen.
Wall, Carolyn D.
Sweeping up glass / Carolyn Wall.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-440-33850-5
1. Widows—Fiction. 2. Grandparent and child—Fiction. 3. Mothers and daughters—Fiction. 4. Depressions—Fiction. 5. Mountain life—Kentucky—Fiction. 6. Hunters—Fiction. 7. Kentucky—Rural conditions—Fiction. 8. Kentucky—Race relations—Fiction. 9. Domestic fiction. 10. Psychological fiction.
I. Title.
PS3623.A35963S84 2009
813′.6—dc22 2008048080
www.randomhousereaderscircle.com
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