No Season But the Summer

by Matilda Leyser
 
Ed says "Weaving beautiful prose with relevant social commentary Matilda Leyser takes the tale of Demeter,Persephone and Hades and sets it in present-day Oxfordshire. Demeter's house is threatened bya new A road, her daughter spends half a year underground with her husband - the God of theUnderworld - and her powers seem to be waning a little. But everything will turn out OK, right?After all, she's an immortal and has staved off every threat to her existence for nine thousand years;why should this turn out any different? Perhaps because her daughter has become involved with theall-too-human road protestors, her son-in-law wants to rip up the rules of their prior agreement,and her brother / co-parent (this is Greek mythology!), Zeus - supposedly the mightiest God ofthem all - seems to be undergoing a mid-life crisis that threatens all of their futures..."
 
What happens when our oldest stories fail us? When all the rules have changed? The classic myth of Persephone — reimagined for a modern-day reader.
 
Persephone spends six months under the ground with her husband, king of the dead, and six months on earth with her mother, goddess of the harvest. It has been this way for nine thousand years. But when she emerges this spring, something is different. Rains lash the land, crops grow out of season or not at all, there are people trying to build a road through the woods, and her mother does not seem able to stop them. The natural world is changing rapidly and even the gods have lost control. While Demeter tries to regain her powers and fend off her daughter’s husband, who wants to drag his queen back underground for good, Persephone finally gets a taste of freedom. But what will this mean for her mother, her husband, and for the new shoots of life inside her?
 
Format: Paperback