Alcestis

A novel that is as intoxicating and hypnotic as the sacred smoke inhaled bythe oracles.Elizabeth Knox author of The Vintners Luck and The DreamhunterDuet. An en... » 

A novel that is as intoxicating and hypnotic as the sacred smoke inhaled bythe oracles.Elizabeth Knox author of The Vintners Luck and The DreamhunterDuet. An engaging subversive reimagining of the tale of the eponymousGreek heroine who is upheld as a shining example of the dutiful wife for herselfless sacrifice.Jacqueline Carey author of Kushiels Mercy In Greekmythology Alcestis is known as the good wife she loved her husband so muchthat she died to save his life and was sent to the underworld in his place. Inthis poetic and vividly imagined debut Katharine Beutner gives voice to thewoman behind the ideal bringing to life the world of Mycenaean Greece a worldpeopled by capricious gods where royal women are confined to the palacegrounds and passed as possessions from father to husband. Alcestis tells ofa childhood spent with her sisters in the bedchamber where her mother diedgiving birth to her and of her marriage at the age of fifteen to Admetus theyoung king of Pherae a man she barely knows who is kind but whose heartbelongs to a god. She also tells the part of the story thats never been toldWhat happened to Alcestis in the three days she spent in the underworld beforebeing rescued by Heracles? In the realm of the dead Alcestis falls in lovewith the goddess Persephone and discovers the true horror and beauty of death.Katharine Beutner grew up in Lancaster Pennsylvania. She earned a BA inclassical studies from Smith College in 2003 and she recently completed an MAin creative writing at the University of Texas at Austin where she iscurrently a PhD student in eighteenthcentury British literature. Her work hasappeared in Lady Churchills Rosebud Wristlet. Alcestis is her first novel. «