Glass Bottle Season
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?
Fletcher Michael is a writer from Rhode Island. He holds a BA from Salve Regina University and an MA in English Literature from Catholic University of America. Prior to attending graduate school, Fletcher taught English in Taiwan and worked at an art gallery and television studio in Manhattan. His work has been published in Literary Imagination, Mobius Magazine, Meat for Tea: The Valley Review, Points in Case, Slackjaw, Jane Austen's Wastebasket, and The Lindenwood Review. His debut novel, Vulture, was published in 2022. The fruits of his writing efforts can be found here: byfletch.wordpress.com.
