Glass Bottle Season

Freshly graduated from college and unsure what the fall will bring, the end of the summer looms on his horizon, inciting in Ray a fear that by September, social and economic realities will label him unworthy of the glitzy world to which he has briefly—almost accidentally—gained access.

Featured in "The Best Summer Beach Reads From Rhody Authors" by Rhode Island Monthly (July 2023)

Summertime on Rhode Island’s luxurious Aquidneck Island.

A middle-class Cuban American—freshly graduated from college—reckons with his fragile standing among the wealthy community in which he was raised, from which he might be cast out before the summer ends.

Raymond Wilson-Domingo has never felt entirely comfortable among the elitist crowd of Newport’s old-money aristocracy—partly because he''s Cuban, partly because of his modest upbringing in the city’s undesirable Fifth Ward neighborhood. But this summer, worlds collide, casting the differences between Ray and his peers in high relief. From his job at a boutique wine shop to a misguided plan to become a lawyer to a doomed romance with the doyenne of Newport, Ray may be in for more than he’s bargained for. And let’s not forget the impending Campbell-Doheny wedding and all the money, gossip, and drama that surrounds it. Ray would do anything to cement his place among New England’s most elite social circles, but will it ever be enough?