I am in charge of the senior library and work with a group of Reading Ambassadors from 16-18 to ensure that our boarding school library is modernised and meets the need of both our senior students and staff. It has been great to have the chance to talk about these books with our seniors and discuss what they want and need on their shelves. I was drawn to his book because I thought it would be something different from the usual school library fare and draw the students in with a tempting storyline and lots to discuss.
This book was a really enjoyable read with strong characters and a real sense of time and place. I enjoyed the ways that it maintained a cracking pace that kept me turning its pages and ensured that I had much to discuss with them after finishing. It was not only a lively and enjoyable novel but had lots of contemporary themes for our book group to pick up and spend hours discussing too.
I think it's important to choose books that interest as well as challenge our students and I can see this book being very popular with students and staff alike; this will be an excellent purchase as it has everything that we look for in a great read - a tempting premise, fantastic characters and a plot that keeps you gripped until you close its final page.

The last few times I’ve been to the library this book has been on a display shelf watching me. I walked past a Waterstones last week & I could see the book on one of the shelves just inside the door. When I’ve logged into my local libraries version of Audible, this book kept appearing at the top of two or three of the various categories. On Sunday night I gave in & borrowed it. I finished it last night. Nearly 9 hours of narration & it felt both like more and less.
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Set in Junction in 1888, “The Glovemaker” tells the story of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) Deborah Tyler, her family and her neighbours. Throughout the book, Deborah faces a number of challenges – a husband late returning for working in other towns, a harsh winter and a Federal Marshall in pursuit of a Mormon brother who has broken the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act of 1862. So many elements in this tale work against the idea of a happy ending and Weisgarber writes that these are “…a reminder from God that everything, even boulders, could find themselves in places they hadn’t expected.”
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I hadn’t set out to read a book set in Utah or about Mormons but I’m glad that this book kept appearing to me. The prose, the finely tuned choice of words, the steady flow of the story, never ceasing to its conclusion, pulled me along with it. I could feel the cold wind as it rushed through an open door, I could imagine the orchard, faintly visible at night from Deborah’s cabin. I could imagine the vast beauty of the area and the harsh unforgiving way it can steal so much from an individual.
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“The Glovemaker” isn’t a roller coaster ride or fast-paced. There are no gunfights or explosions. What readers get in this book is a well-researched fiction filled with characters you can’t possibly relate to but feel sympathy for all the same.
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I want to finish with a quote that doesn’t come from the book or from the Mormons but sums up “The Glovemaker” quite well.
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peace makes you strong
hate reveals your emptiness
kindness feeds your happiness
anger reveals your fear
love makes you free.
— yung pueblo

This is the first book I have read by Ann Weisgarber. I found it interesting, a great insight into the Mormon community in the late 19th century. I did find it a little slow though. I stuck with it even though it did not really do it for me.

Thanks to Netgalley for my free copy in exchange for an honest review.

I was drawn to this book by the beautiful cover and is the first book I have read by Ann Weisgarber.
It is a well written, well researched book set in a Mormon settlement in Utah in 1888. I found it an interesting but very slow story and not a lot happened to be honest.
I didn't dislike it but I didn't love it either, so I give it three stars.

The Glovemaker is a fine example of a meticulously researched and exquisitely characterised work of historical fiction. The plot unfurls slowly and steadily as you read, and both the beautifully drawn characters and the plot are vividly engaging; I felt as though I was there with them and not just looking from the outside in. It is, however, a rather bleak and melancholy-infused story that gets under your skin, but the descriptions of nineteenth-century rural Utah and the townsfolk are appealing making you read on. A highly enjoyable historical piece. I look forward to much more to come in a similar vein from Ms Weisgarber; her future is indeed bright.

Many thanks to Mantle for an ARC.

A great historical novel, engaging and entertaining.
It's a gentle paced, well researched and well written historical novel that does a really good job in describing the characters and their everyday life.
The plot is very good, it develops slowly and keeps you interested till the last page.
Recommended!
Many thanks to Pan Macmillan and Netgalley for this ARC

What fantastic characterisation - I felt drawn to the characters. You can tell an awful lot of research was done prior to writing this novel. Enjoyable read

Having read and loved the authors two previous books I have waited and anticipated a new title by her for quite some time. So I was eager to read this and very fortunate to receive an advance copy.

I quite simply LOVED it.

The author has the amazing skill of creating, convincing characters whose skin you can slip inside for the duration of the book. Strong, credible women who live a life so different to my own it would seem virtually impossible to relate to them. Yet the women she creates have left such an indelible mark on me it feels as though they have left a fine layer of themselves in my soul.

She writes about well researched austere locations where I have never been yet by the time I finish reading I feel as though I once lived there. This time we visit the location of Rural Utah in a secluded valley amidst harsh yet dramatic landscapes.

This book is leisurely and gradual, gentle and rather bleak and the narrative is precise and sometimes spare, which creates a real feel of the isolation and loneliness of living in a remote place with few people to talk to. It is set in the middle of a bleak snow-filled January and was the perfect winter read.

For the time I was in this story I WAS Deborah, the glovemaker.

She is one of a small breakaway group of Latterday Saints, Mormons who live apart from most of their faith as they hold themselves slightly apart in that they don't comply with or even condone the plural marriages practised by others of their religion.

Deborah lives with her husband, who is a travelling wheel repairer visiting equally remote villages and farms repairing and making wheels for the folk who need this service. His return home is overdue and as Deborah waits and longs for his arrival, she joins forces with her step brother in law, when a fugitive lands on her doorstep, bringing danger and a real threat to her which she couldn't anticipate.

Don't expect fast-paced, rip-roaring action, this book is deliberate, takes place mainly over a brief period and it is quite sombre and bleak. Yet I completely adored it.

If you appreciate a well-told absorbing tale, great characters and unique locations you just can't miss this. I felt very bereft when I finished it.

I have to be honest what attracted me to this book was the beautiful cover. I know the saying ‘ never judge a book by its cover’ but I just couldn’t help it.
I enjoyed the story- it certainly get you wanting to know more .
Thank you to both NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for my eARC of the book in exchange for my honest unbiased review

This story is about a few months in the life of Nels and Deborah in a tiny Mormon "town" of about 8 famiies called Junction (based on the real settlement later known as Fruitia). Deborah is married to Samuel, a wheelwright who went off travelling in September to fix wheels and teach wheelwright skills to other Mormon settlers in scattered communities who should be back in the weeks before Christmas. She was a glovemaker before her marraige, which although happy is childless. Nels is Samule's half brother a widower.
Everyojne in Junction has moved there to get some space from all the rules and coercion in the Mormon church at the time but are still practicising Saints. Samuel fails to return before Christmas and just after Christmas danger comes to the town. Polygamy has become outlawed and Junction has become a staging post for men escaping the law. Nels reluctantly takes these men on to Floral Ranch a haven for them. Deborah's cabin is the first house in the town and one night a man comes looking for refuge witha US Marshal hot on his heels.

The story of what happens next becomes the main plot of the novel although much time is given to flashbacks of Nel and Deborah's past, how they cope with Samuel's disappearance and their feelings about life and the church. The narrative flows well and the story certainly had me gripped. I really liked it. However, I felt it was kind if "haf a book" as the story suddenly ends and I wanted to know more about what happened next, especially as Deborah was so worried about the repercussions of their actions.