Vigil Harbor

A Novel

By: Julia Glass

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Kimberly Farr, Jeremy Davidson, January LaVoy, Michael Crouch, Kirsten Potter, Mark Deakins, Hillary Huber, Alec Glass

Length: 17 hrs and 9 mins

Publisher's summary

From the National Book Award-winning, bestselling author of Three Junes comes "an engrossing, richly drawn and exquisitely told story of small-town residents grappling with the difficulties of changing times" (People).

“Full of secrets and surprises...A must-read.”—J. Courtney Sullivan, author of Friends and Strangers

When two unexpected visitors arrive in an insular coastal village, they threaten the equilibrium of a community already confronting climate instability, political violence, and domestic upheavals.

A decade from now, in the historic town of Vigil Harbor, there is a rash of divorces among the yacht-club set, a marine biologist despairs at the state of the world, a spurned wife is bent on revenge, and the renowned architect Austin Kepner pursues a passion for building homes designed to withstand the escalating fury of relentless storms. Austin’s stepson, Brecht, has dropped out of college in New York and returned home after narrowly escaping one of the terrorist acts that, like hurricanes, have become increasingly common.

Then two strangers arrive: a stranded traveler with subversive charms and a widow seeking clues about a past lover with ties to Austin—a woman who may have been more than merely human. These strangers and their hidden motives come together unexpectedly in an incident that endangers lives—including Brecht’s—with dramatic repercussions for the entire town.

Vigil Harbor reveals Julia Glass in all her virtuosity, braiding multiple voices and dazzling strands of plot into a story where mortal longings and fears intersect with immortal mysteries of the deep as well as of the heart.

©2022 Julia Glass (P)2022 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Sprawling and engrossing. . . . Glass is a masterful builder of fictional people, an expert at charting the architecture of entire lives. . . . Vigil Harbor transcends the mood of collective but cloistered worry and becomes a novel about what remains.”—The New York Times Book Review

“A richly imagined world . . . the passionate, mysterious, and mysteriously passionate characters in Julia Glass’s new novel, Vigil Harbor, . . . [create] an intimate and satisfying tableau of humanity . . . [with] felicitous attention to the nuances of small town life, from the pleasure found in pageantry to the nearly mythic status of longtime teachers. But ultimately this is a story about people, about understanding and acceptance, about love and violence, and about how no matter where we live, we need each other, especially when times are tough.”—Boston Globe

"An engrossing, richly drawn and exquisitely told story of small-town residents grappling with the difficulties of changing times."—People, Book of the Week

Great Parable About Modern Times

The mixture of realistic, complicated characters wrestling with their loves and the world and some implied otherworldly events makes for a compelling read. That it takes places in the not-so distant future, and that that world feels plausible and somewhat dystopian, also makes it a kind of mourning piece in a way. But will leave you with some hope in the end, if not some new questions for yourself.

Good performances of this overly ambitious novel

Divided by chapter by a cast of characters cycled through the plot, is an ambitious novel that almost chokes itself.