The Glass Mountain

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

Chloe Delaney is “nobody’s child.” Adopted by unloving parents, hers is a lonely childhood. One day she discovers a pile of unopened letters hidden away in the back of a drawer — proof that she too has a family of her own somewhere, a family that wants her. If only she can find them. Finding that family, finding herself, preoccupies her life. Her story opens in the mental institution to which the stress of her life of searching has brought her. She has been the fairytale princess at the top of the glass mountain, and although many have sought to climb the mountain and claim her, the glassy defences have been too strong. Until now. This story of the talented musician and loving if ineffectual mother who is herself a “lost child,” surrounded by a fascinating cast of secondary characters, is compulsively readable.