Customer Reviews

Colored Glass

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This was an extremely enjoyable book in the tradition of many others written about the South. The characters are richly drawn and come to life, and the author has a knack for making you see the sights, hear the sounds and smell the smells of the country setting and the time period. The mood reminds me of stories told to me by my parents, who grew up around that era. The lines between good and evil are clearly drawn, and the suspense builds, slowly and evenly, to the climax. I especially enjoyed the inner conflict and reasoning of the main character, Tom Bainbridge, who carries a great burden in a turbulent time. All of the central characters have depth and detail and the peripheral characters shine also. Even the villain Abel Flint's character isn't simply characterized as evil incarnate. I highly recommend the book to anyone, especially those who enjoy novels about the South and authors who can paint such a colorful and concise picture.

It was a wonderfully written story. From character buildup to the last scenes, the details were especially vivid. Having no experience with the South, nor the Ku Klux Klan, Noelle brings forth lifestyle dichotomies of whites living with blacks during that time. The personalities of each character is richly developed to the point where you could almost hear and see each one standing in front of you. Noelle has a talant for bringing beginning, middle and end together articulately and elegantly. This book was difficult to put down - I highly recommend it.

Colored Glass is a captivating read, a page turner about one of the most important social changes in the history of the USA. The author weaves the story of a southern community and a family attempting to survive ordinary daily life during a time when a great social upheaval was brewing on the horizon. Not all southerners were racists, many were anti segregation and felt kindness and consideration towards all men, but to express these sentiments openly in the segregated south was inviting danger and oftentimes loss of life to yourself and family.
The author portrays a very realistic picture of what it was like to live in the South where segregation was the norm but everyone knew that integration was soon to come.

Growing up in the 50s and 60s I was effected by integration, seeing busses of kids with different colored skin than my own arrive to attend classes. Everything in life isn't black and white, whether we're talking about skin color or ways to think about life's issues. "Colored Glass" is an extremely well written chronicle of this time period and how skin color effected much of the dealings between people in the South. The Klan, the social settings, the mindsets all played an almost too large a role in the way people lived their lives. What we have on "Colored Glass" is a beautiful story teaching us lessons without us knowing it about the way things were, are and should be. Everything isn't black and white..."Colored Glass" to me symbolically shows the type of adornment on graves of people with color as well as the fragile shattering nature of the way society treated and still does treat a large segment of the population, and how sad that is. Triumphant novel...a must read.

Colored Glass is a lovingly crafted remembrance of a time, a place, and a people who lived tenuously on a precarious edge of change and of how the members of one family were transformed by the dangers they faced. While all of the characters who inhabit a fictional Willow Bend, Louisiana, in the 1950s are vividly drawn, the most memorable character for me is John Boley, who simultaneously hides and expresses his anguish by mimicking the craziness of the way of life that oppresses him. While slowly building to a dramatic climax, the author convincingly recreates the fears, the hardships, and the joys that defined daily life in the rural South fifty years ago.

"Colored Glass" is a stirring novel I couldn't put down. The author of this book appears to possess an innate ability to not only peak interest with every turn of the page, but also invoke a need for the reader to reflect upon their own beliefs regarding what they would do if faced with a moral, ethical and possibly life-changing decision. I highly recommend this book to fans of "To Kill a Mockingbird" as well as anyone who wishes to not only read, but "experience" a well written novel. Although I haven't spent much time in the South, I could almost feel the humidity with every description detailed by the author.