Clara and Mr. Tiffany, by Susan Vreeland

This book was recommended to me by a colleague. I don't often venture into historical romance but this was a nice easy read, albeit, a bit long. I read it while I was sick with a cold, and it was a perfect read for those days when I wasn't 100%. I was glad when it ended -- both the book and the cold.

Although some people may have enjoyed the detail on how the glass panels were made and assembled, I would have been satisfied with less. I was also reading The Sisters Brothers at the same time, and it was like mixing whiskey with saccharine. The whiskey will be remembered, but this book will be quietly forgotten.

Here is the summary:

Against the unforgettable backdrop of New York near the turn of the twentieth century, from the Gilded Age world of formal balls and opera to the immigrant poverty of the Lower East Side, bestselling author Susan Vreeland again breathes life into a work of art in this extraordinary novel, which brings a woman once lost in the shadows into vivid color. It's 1893, and at the Chicago World's Fair, Louis Comfort Tiffany makes his debut with a luminous exhibition of innovative stained-glass windows, which he hopes will honor his family business and earn him a place on the international artistic stage. But behind the scenes in his New York studio is the freethinking Clara Driscoll, head of his women's division. Publicly unrecognized by Tiffany, Clara conceives of and designs nearly all of the iconic leaded-glass lamps for which he is long remembered. Clara struggles with her desire for artistic recognition and the seemingly insurmountable challenges that she faces as a professional woman, which ultimately force her to protest against the company she has worked so hard to cultivate. She also yearns for love and companionship, and is devoted in different ways to five men, including Tiffany, who enforces to a strict policy: he does not hire married women, and any who do marry while under his employ must resign immediately. Eventually, like many women, Clara must decide what makes her happiest-the professional world of her hands or the personal world of her heart