One crack, and the walls will shatter.

When you’re the new white kid in an Oklahoma town hemorrhaging with racial and class divisions, accidentally taking the wallet from a dead black man isn’t a simple matter for the police.

James embarks on a tortuous journey to navigate tensions in the town, while trying to correct the mistake he never should have made. His efforts are hampered by his inability to understand racial prejudice and by those who refuse to let him cross the entrenched racial and class barriers. 

When James’s only friend his age - an African-American girl - is targeted by both the white and the black kids, James discovers that his greatest weakness and his greatest strength is that he is colorblind.

Walls of Glass is a story of forbidden friendship, failure, and redemption.  

Praise for the book:

“J.W. Elliot wields a gifted pen. His novel Walls of Glass is a powerful work of fiction. Elliot creates a cast of memorable characters that jump off the page and escort you into a very real and relatable world. Walls of Glass is a page-turner that kept me up late into the night. Highly recommended!” (Steven Manchester, number one best-selling author of The Rockin’ Chair and Ashes)