In this story of becoming, flamehaired, six-foot-two in stocking feet, newly orphaned Carlotta Dell'oro recounts the lives of her parentssolitary glassmaker Leopoldo Dell'oro and beautiful, unreachable Clotilde Girard, who met on an expedition aboard the Narcissus in 1841and discovers in their loves and losses, their omissions and obsessions, the circumstances of her abandonment and the weight of her inheritance. With a master artisan's patience and exquisite craft, debut novelist Lori Baker has created a gemlike Victorian world, a place wheremistakes of the past reappear in the future, art can destroy, and family is not to be trusted.