The Pilgrim Glass is a place to share the beauty of stained glass - and other art and art objects - from around the world.
It is also the title of my novel.
Check out juliekrose.com for more about the book, and juliekrose.tumblr.com for more about me.
Just a quick note to let you know that Heather Domin’s new novella is now available for free. Allegiance is an historical novella set in 1922 Dublin, a story of dangerous romance in a time of bitter turmoil.
Heather has such an amazingly deft touch with historical detail, and the story is a great mix of action and romance. Give yourself a New Year’s gift and check it out!
So excited to announce that my new novel, Oleanna, will be released in late January 2012. Set during the separation of Norway from Sweden in 1905, this richly detailed novel of love and loss was inspired by the life of my great-great-aunts.
Oleanna and her sister Elisabeth are the last of their family working their farm deep in the western fjordland. A new century has begun, and the world outside is changing, but in the Sunnfjord their world is as small and secluded as the verdant banks of a high mountain lake. With their parents dead and their brothers all gone to America, the sisters have resigned themselves to a simple life tied to the land and to the ghosts of those who have departed.
The arrival of Anders, a cotter living just across the farm’s border, unsettles Oleanna’s peaceful but isolated existence. Sharing a common bond of loneliness and grief, Anders stirs within her the wildness and wanderlust she has worked so hard to tame. When she is confronted with another crippling loss, Oleanna must decide once and for all how to face her past, claim her future, and find her place in a wide new world.
Oleanna was short-listed in the 2011 Faulkner-Wisdom novel competition.
Reviewers and book bloggers interested in an advance copy: please email me at juliekrose at gmail dot com.
You can purchase The Pilgrim Glass from these fine retailers:
Lucy is a Sicilian saint, the patroness of Syracuse where she was martyred in the reign of Diocletian. One story says that when a suitor admired her beautiful eyes she cut them out and sent them to him, asking to be left in peace thereafter (like most early Christian virgin martyrs, she refused marriage). Now she is the patron of eye diseases and the blind and is often depicted carrying her eyeballs on a plate.
Lucy means “light.” Lucina is the Sabine goddess of Light, who was often pictured holding a plate of cakes (later mistaken for eyeballs) and a lamp. She was later absorbed into an aspect of Juno, Juno Lucina, who is goddess of childbirth, bringing children to light. Since Lucy’s day falls right before (or, before the calendar change, upon) the winter solstice, she can be seen as the midwife of the miraculous sun-child who is born at Yule…
The celebration of St Lucy spread over all of Europe. But the place where she is most beloved is Scandinavia, where light is especially welcome in the long hours of winter darkness. On her day, the eldest (or youngest) daughter rises before dawn and fixes a breakfast of special pastries and coffee for her family. She appears in their bedrooms, dressed in a white dress belted with a red sash, and wearing a wreath of greens and four (or seven or nine) lighted candles. Sometimes the wreath is made of green rue and decorated with red ribbons. She serves traditional pastries called lussekatter (or Lucy cats), x-shaped pastries, sometimes flavored with saffron. Other traditional foods served in her honor include saffron buns, ginger biscuits and glogg, a hot spiced wine with aquavit.
Photo of St. Lucy at St. Mungo Simonburn by davewebster14 on Flickr.
In the center is a large figure of Christ seated within a mandorla (almond-shaped halo). Bolts of lightning (or rays of light) shoot out from Christ’s hands and hit the apostles in the heads. St. Peter, recognizable by his keys, sits closest to the right side of Christ.
The inner archivolt around the tympanum and the lintel below are populated with the peoples of the world who will hear the message of Christ. These include, on the lintel, the “Monstrous Race” of foreign lands, such as people with giant ears. This provides a fascinating insight into the medieval worldview and popular legends of the time. The outer archivolt consists of medallions with the Zodiacs and Labors of the Months, symbolizing the timelessness of the message.
Sagittarius photo via ParadoxPlace.
Tympanum photo © Sacred Destinations
The crypt has a very important role to play in The Pilgrim Glass. I was incredibly moved by my visit there; you could feel the history in the stone.
The lovely Meg over at A Bookish Affair has posted her review of The Pilgrim Glass.
Thanks, Meg!
Publishers Weekly calls The Pilgrim Glass a “highly enjoyable French mystery.”
The Pilgrim Glass is the story of an artist, a priest, and a photographer, and the restoration of a stained glass one summer in Vézelay, France. This is no ordinary glass, however; it has a strange, almost hypnotic effect on them, changing them in positive and destructive ways.
Jonas Flycatcher, a well-respected but prickly artisan is contracted to repair a stained glass found deep in the ancient altar of the cathedral of Mary Magdalene at Vézelay. Traveling from California to Burgundy for the project, he meets Abbot Dubay, a worldly priest with a painful secret.
He begins the laborious work of restoring the stained glass offering, but when he meets Meredith, an ex-pat photographer who seems to be channeling a 12th century pilgrim, his carefully constructed world - and the ancient glass - are threatened.
You can purchase The Pilgrim Glass from these fine retailers:
Photo by Craig Allyn Rose
