Glorie is a sparkling debut, a heartbreaking and funny first novel with a brilliantly drawn and compelling character at its center—Gloria Carcieri. Gloria—she only lets her husband call her Glorie—had that rare and enviable thing, a truly happy marriage. Now a widow for seven years, Glorie is not quite able to let Jack go. In her heart, he is still alive, and in her head, she keeps up a running dialogue with him. She saves her slyest comments and deepest longings for his ears only. In some ways she has never had to let go. She spends her days in the house where they lived, and simply crosses the street at night to sleep at her daughter's house. But as the novel begins, a crisis looms. Glorie's accountant son-in-law, Patrick, wants to sell the house and even Glorie's highly patient daughter, Louisa, agrees that it is time.

Glorie's action and much of its comedy is fueled by Glorie's pretense of openmindedness. She agrees to spend a trial night with the colorful trio of Patrick's aunts in their retirement community while she secretly plans to foil the sale of the house, plotting late-night pizza deliveries and dabbling in the Evil Eye. The novel is also highly interior. Facing the world alone while trying to keep Jack's memory alive proves to be a complicated ordeal. At times fiercely determined, at others gripped by doubt, Glorie wars even within herself to find an acceptable way to live the rest of her life.

At the heart of this novel is a fifty-year love story. What is Glorie without Jack? If she moves on with her life, does it mean letting Jack go? Does loving someone so completely allow you to truly love anyone else? Caryn James has interwoven Glorie's widowhood with flashbacks that illuminate her immigrant childhood, her youthful dreams, and her passionate marriage. The skillfully entwined past and present evoke a unique character, headstrong and imperfect, whose story is completely her own yet speaks to every reader who has ever known or lost love.