The Glovemaker, Ann Weisgarber’s engrossing, troubling, honest-to-goodness third novel, is as stark and touching as the lives described, as tense and testing as the Utah backlands where it’s set, as fine as any fiction you will read this year

A tense, taut, historically faithful tale

Ann Weisgarber is a historian of the first degree, but her true strength lies in crafting sweeping and often poignant fictional narratives of the iconic women who helped settle the American heartland. Ms. Weisgarber, in The Glovemaker, has once again created a heroine of extraordinary grace and courage in a challenging, at times violent, but ultimately sublime landscape.

Weisgarber’s exploration of a woman struggling to satisfy her conscience is telling and touching

The Glovemaker is another triumph from one of our country’s finest historical novelists. Once again Ann Weisgarber gives us a spellbinding, multi-layered heroine whose survival is jeopardized by the harshness of the land and the man she loves. A tale of moral complexity as compelling and suspenseful as the great American classic, The Ox-Bow Incident, The Glovemaker deftly explores a woman, alone with her conscience and the devastating consequences of serving community over self, finding the strength to choose right over righteousness

A compelling story balanced on the knife edge between religion and ethics, crime and sin, compassion and fear

I loved everything about this book – the characters, the plot, the vivid and unique setting – but most of all I loved the fact that it felt so raw and honest

Vintage Americana, as chilling as Cold Mountain

When I first started reading Ann Weisgarber’s new book, I had no expectation that a novel about renegade Mormons in Utah in the 1880’s could turn out to be so precisely suspenseful that, if Alfred Hitchcock were alive, he might snap up the film rights. The Glovemaker is a humane, high-velocity glimpse into the ever-simmering dilemmas of faith and conscience

Marvelous . . . This is a rich, powerful, and wholly immersive tale

Weisgarber makes effective use of early Mormon history to explore moral choice, and compression in language, setting, number of characters, and chronology lends this tale an unusual force

Historical novelist Ann Weisgarber beautifully paints the harsh, lonely environment of the Utah Territory . . . while creating tense moments and life-altering revelations of her heroine . . . Weisgarber’s strong grip on suspense keeps the pages turning until the last storm passes

Ann Weisgarber excels at the slowly unfurling tale, where the characters’ waiting and indecision
build tension as deftly as any action sequence. Highly recommend.