Glass Eel : A Novel

Exploring the power of female friendships in times of despair

In the near-future United States, abortion is criminalized. Women are not only stripped of bodily autonomy but are also arrested and put through various punishments, including a Christian fundamentalist rehabilitation program and manual labor. Thrown together in this harrowing corrections process, two women, E and M, form a deep bond. Rippling through time and space, Glass Eel illuminates an imminent nightmare while exploring the unbreakable force of female friendship in times of despair.

Before serving their sentences, E is a romantic who is prone to vivid, maladaptive daydreaming, and M is an empiricist studying to become a marine biologist. Isolated by her devout mother, E turns inward, developing a passion for poetry and myth. At the exact wrong time, she becomes involved with a married man. When E becomes pregnant, he gaslights her, denying their entire relationship. M, while working as a part-time performer at an underwater mermaid theater, carries the heavy responsibility of being the sole provider for her sick mother. One night, she reluctantly accompanies her roommate to a party where she's raped. Both E and M make the difficult decision to terminate their pregnancies and are eventually arrested for it.

Brought together to serve their sentences, E and M painstakingly labor underground to unclog the Chicago sewers at night. By day, they wander the bleak shore of a radioactive industrial lake, home to mysterious unearthly creatures. E and M unravel psychologically, desperate to cope with their impossible new reality as they grasp at their last real connection—their friendship—to make it through this dystopian time. Glass Eel explores the bond between E and M to show how people hold each other together when everything feels like it is falling apart.