New York, NY: Norton (July 25, 2023)

Paperback.

New.

A Vulture Best Short Book

A She Reads Indie Book Club Pick for Summer

“Alexis Smith’s brilliant debut novel is filled with kaleidoscopic pleasures. Line by line, in and out of time, this is a haunted, joyful, beautiful book—a true gift.” —Karen Russell

“Her story could be told in other people’s things. The postcards and the photographs. A garnet ring and a needlepoint of the homestead. The aprons hanging from her kitchen door. Her soft, faded, dog-eared copy of Little House in the Big Woods. A closet full of dresses sewn before she was born. All these things tell a story, but is it hers?”

Isabel is a single twenty-something in Portland, Oregon, who repairs damaged books in the basement of the local library, dreaming of a life she can’t quite reach. She is filled with longing—for a life in Amsterdam even though she’s never visited, for the unrequited love of a coworker, for a simpler time from her childhood in Alaska among the threatened glaciers she loves, and for the perfect vintage dress to wear to a party that just might change everything.

Unfolding over the course of a single day, Alexis M. Smith’s shimmering debut finds Isabel looking into her past—remembering her parents’ separation, a meeting with an astrologer, and a life-changing encounter with a glacier—and shows us how fleeting, everyday moments can reveal an entire life. In classic movies, in old photographs and unsent postcards, rare books, and thrifted gems, Glaciers tells the story of a young woman’s love of the past and a hope to make something new and all her own.

Alexis M. Smith's writing has appeared in Tarpaulin Sky, Moss, Portland Review, Bon Appétit, The Spokesman-Review and elsewhere. Her second novel, Marrow Island, is the winner of a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award and a Lambda Literary Award. She lives in Spokane, Washington.

Maris Kreizman is the host of The Maris Review, a weekly literary podcast from Lit Hub. Her work has appeared in New York Magazine, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Esquire, The New Republic, and more. Her essay collection, I Want To Burn This Place Down, is forthcoming from Ecco/HarperCollins.