Glassworks

A multigenerational portrait of desire, reinvention, and the fragile beauty of what we leave behind.

In 1910, Agnes Carter, once a fiercely independent patron of the sciences, finds herself trapped in a suffocating marriage to a cruel and reckless man. When she meets Ignace Novak—a Bohemian glassblower with a passion for the natural world—Agnes glimpses a life that might have been, and begins to forge a secret future with irreversible consequences.

That moment of defiance sends quiet ripples through generations. Her son Edward, torn between spiritual devotion and earthly longing, seeks clarity in the kaleidoscopic light of a stained-glass studio. In 1986, his child—Novak, a gravity-defying window washer—crosses paths with Cecily, a dazzling, gender-defying Broadway star with her own tangled history.

By 2015, their daughter Flip is lost in the fog of burnout, working in a strange little job turning cremains into glass keepsakes. But as she begins to unravel her family’s silences, Flip uncovers a legacy of passion and reinvention that just might break the cycle of disconnection.

Spanning four generations and anchored by unforgettable characters, Glassworks is an intimate and gorgeously written debut about identity in all its fluid, luminous forms—and the hidden threads that bind us through time.