Seeds

Reviled by her village, unloved by her mother, Persephone never expects to be accepted anywhere, let alone among a group of Olympian goddesses. Yet, that's exactly what happens when the goddesses seek her out and reveal the truth of Persephone's heritage: that her mother was once a goddess and Persephone is one too.Persephone is still reeling from this when a chariot emerges from a cavern on the edge of the meadow where Persephone met the goddesses. The dark man driving it seizes her and whisks her away to his realm. There he reveals that he's Hades, God of the Underworld.While Persephone plots her escape, Demeter sets out to reclaim her daughter. When Zeus restores her godhood but not Persephone, Demeter wields her power ruthlessly, bringing humanity and the gods to the edge of ruin. Only Persephone can bring them back from the brink, but if she does, she'll have to leave behind the happiness she's finally found in the most unexpected of places and return to a mother who always made her feel she was never enough.Angie Paxton's retelling of Homer's "e;Hymn to Demeter,"e; set in Mycenaean Greece, grapples with the 21st-century questions of what children owe the parents who hurt them and if they have a choice in how the seeds that are planted in childhood form them as adults.