House of Glass

House of Glass (2024) is a thriller by New York Times best-selling author Sarah Pekkanen, who is known for writing domestic thrillers that probe the human psyche and explore the secrecy, deception, and dysfunction that impact familial and romantic relationships. House of Glass is noteworthy for its depiction of best interest attorneys—special legal representatives appointed by the courts to determine the best interests of children in complex custody cases. The protagonist, Stella Hudson, is herself a childhood trauma survivor who feels a unique connection to the vulnerable young people she represents. As she investigates a mysterious death and does her best to uncover one family’s buried secrets, she is drawn back into her own dark and troubled past.

In addition to House of Glass, Pekkanen has co-authored The Golden Couple (2023), You Are Not Alone (2021), An Anonymous Girl (2019), and The Wife Between Us (2018) with Greer Hendricks and has also written Gone Tonight (2023), among other titles.

This guide refers to the 2024 hardcover edition published by St. Martin’s Press.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain descriptions of child abuse and neglect, trauma, panic attacks, drug addiction, death from a drug overdose, death from a car accident, and murder.

Summary

Best interest attorney Stella Hudson tries to determine whether to take on the case of Rose Barclay, a young girl who witnessed her nanny’s mysterious death and is now the subject of an acrimonious custody battle. Rose is only nine, and Stella typically works with adolescent children, but her longtime friend, father figure, and mentor, Charles Baxter, has asked her to represent Rose, who is experiencing traumatic mutism, a condition in which trauma survivors lose the power of speech. (Stella also experienced this condition during her own fraught childhood.) During Stella’s initial observation, she witnesses Rose swiftly pick up a shard of glass from the sidewalk and silently slip it into her pocket. Wondering why such a small child would feel the need to carry a weapon and worried that one of her parents is a murderer, Stella agrees to represent Rose.

Her role as a best interest attorney requires Stella to spend time with the entire household, both as a group and one-on-one. Rose’s mother, Beth, is an affluent heiress whose formality and tense demeanor are striking to Stella. Rose’s father, Ian, who was once a humble landscaper in Beth’s family home, is more relaxed, but he hides an undercurrent of agitated anxiety. Rose’s grandmother Harriet, Ian’s mother, appears calm and collected but betrays signs of inner turmoil. Stella is also struck by the large, stately Barclay home, which is located on a large, lush acreage outside of Washington, DC. All the glass in the house has been replaced with plastic. Beth claims to have developed a phobia of glass after the family nanny, Tina de la Cruz, plunged to her death through one of the windows, but Stella wonders if she is telling the truth.

The Barclay family has its fair share of secrets. Ian was having a clandestine affair with the nanny when she fell to her death. The police investigated but were unable to gather enough evidence to press charges on anyone in the family. As Stella investigates, Rose steals other weapons, and Stella learns that she was expelled from school for bringing a knife to class. Harriet is overly protective of Beth, urging Stella not to look too closely at her behavior. Stella catches Ian and Beth in a series of bizarre falsehoods and half-truths and becomes increasingly convinced that Rose herself is the killer.

As Stella wrestles with the nature of evil and delves into the dysfunctional lives of the Barclays, she recalls her own traumatic past. She lost her father at an early age in a tragic car accident and then watched her mother succumb to addiction. She found her mother’s body after she died of an overdose. Stella spent the rest of her childhood with a resentful and uncaring aunt, and the only true “family” she now has is Charles, the judge who gave her a job when she was a teenager and acted as father figure and mentor throughout her legal career. With Charles’s help, Stella looks more closely at her mother’s long-buried police files and discovers that Charles played a role in the accident that caused her father’s death. Charles then befriended her mother. He wanted to remain in Stella’s life to “save” her because he failed to prevent her mother’s tragic death by overdose. He has kept this information from her despite their close relationship.

Against the backdrop of her own personal turmoil, Stella learns more about the Barclay case and realizes that Rose is not the killer; instead, Harriet is the mastermind behind Tina’s death. Rose’s problematic behavior is revealed as an attempt to protect herself from her grandmother. Stella confronts Harriet, saves Rose, and helps the Barclay family see Harriet’s true nature. As the novel ends, Stella mends her relationship with Charles, and the Barclays, although divorced, are committed to Rose’s well-being. Harriet is sent to prison.