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WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR IDEAS?
Jars of Glass grew out of a darker place. When I was in high school, my father worked at the state mental hospital. One day while I was visiting him at work, I ran into a girl from my government class. She was the kind of girl everyone wants to be, beautiful, smart, nice, and yet a bit aloof. I found out that day that her mother was a patient at the hospital and not a patient in the A ward, but in the lock-down unit. She was on enough medication to function, barely, but she would likely remain hospitalized for the rest of her life.

That story and the implications of having a loved one committed to a hospital indefinitely rolled around in my head for years before I decided to try and write it. The details are all different. Chloe lives in Maine, not Nevada. She loves art, not cheerleading. She has siblings. Some of the places do exist. The Starbucks where Chloe works is actually in Old Port in Portland, Maine. The beach where they collected sea glass is in Down East, Maine, in a little town named Lubec. The art store, however, is in Reno, Nevada, and the yucky holiday coffee drinks exist only in my imagination.

REVIEWS
"Co-authors Barkley and Hepler offer a seamless, striking story that subtly depicts the girls' incremental growth and the healing they find in new friendships." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

AWARDS AND HONORS
PA School Library Association’s Young Adult Top Forty (or so) Fiction reading lists