BETWEEN GLASS AND STEEL: A Novel of William Percy Williams

A family name can survive even when the record forgets the man.Born in 1896, William Percy Williams enters a world shaped by roaring glass furnaces, unforgiving steel mills, rented rooms, and crowded households in western Pennsylvania. As the son of George Williams and Josephine C. Payton Williams, he inherits more than a name-he inherits the responsibility of finding a place in a country where a Black man's labor is often recorded more carefully than his life.William's journey carries him from Beaver County to Niagara Falls and eventually New Orleans. Along the way, he becomes a husband, father, laborer, and sometimes an absence his family must struggle to understand. Through hardship, migration, grief, and uncertainty, the people he leaves behind fight to preserve their family even when time and distance threaten to pull it apart.Generations later, William's descendants search surviving records for the man hidden between official dates and faded documents. What they discover is not a complete portrait, but a powerful story of endurance, sacrifice, and the lasting consequences of one man's choices.Grounded in family research and documented history, Between Glass and Steel: A Novel of William Percy Williams is a reflective historical novel about Black labor, fatherhood, migration, memory, and the family bonds that endure long after certainty disappears.