Seeds

For fans of Madeline Miller and Pat Barker, a debut fantasy novel set in Mycenaean Greece that explores the myth of Persephone through the lens of mother-daughter dynamics.

Kore has lived her entire life under her resentful mother Demeter's shadow, trying her hardest to please a woman grown bitter by betrayal. With her self-esteem in tatters and deliberately isolated by her mother, it's no surprise that Kore is flummoxed when she meets a collection of otherworldly women - the Goddesses of Olympus - who tell her that her mother is in truth a Goddess herself. Kore tells them her preferred name, Persephone, and hopes they will not only have answers for her new questions, but the friendship and love she craves. Instead, an imposing and stoic figure emerges from a nearby cave on a magical chariot and snatches Persephone away.

Upon realizing she has been taken to the Underworld by Hades, who desires she become his queen, Persephone vows to escape.

Demeter, enraged upon finding her daughter taken, goes to extreme lengths to reclaim her - putting the lives of all humanity, and even the gods, at risk.

Angie Paxton breathes new life into a myth that has been reshaped, adapted, and loved since Homer's Hymn to Demeter. Seeds is a deeply romantic story of two lonely souls finding one another, the pressure put on children to forgive their parents' abuse, and the power of resentment.

Content Warnings: References to child abuse, animal death, starvation, forcible confinement