The Shadow of Perseus

The myth of Perseus is retold through three women the traditional version pushes to the edges: his mother Danae, Medusa, and his wife Andromeda. Each narrates her own part, and together they show a man who is no hero at all.

Danae is a princess exiled from Argos after a prophecy declares that her unborn child will cause her father the king's death. She ends up pregnant and alone in a remote fishing village, far from the comforts of her upbringing. Raising her son Perseus there is the hardest task she has faced.

Medusa belongs to the Gorgons, a secluded group of women living deep in the woods, who have shut out the wider world. That isolation ends when she comes across an injured boy named Perseus in the forest.

Andromeda lives with a nomadic desert tribe. A harsh sandstorm threatens their way of life, and she knows the gods will demand a sacrifice. A forceful young Perseus intervenes, and her life takes a different course.

As Perseus grows fixated on his own destiny, his quest leaves violence and destruction in the lives of all three women. He tries to silence them. The novel is a feminist reinterpretation of Greek myth, and the women's reclaimed voices may be their only route to a better future.