A Fairy Tale Retelling of Persephone and Hades: Apocrypha of Era
Era has always been warned away from the lord of the Underworld. So naturally, she kissed him first. A lyrical, feminist fairy tale retelling of Persephone and Hades — told, for the first time, entirely in her own words.
They say Hades swept her away to his kingdom of darkness. They’re wrong. Era has her own version of events — and she’d like to tell it herself.
The granddaughter of Father Time and daughter of the Queen of the Earth, Era has spent her whole life carefully watched, carefully kept, and carefully protected from a danger no one will name. She has learned to push past that careful boundary one daring act at a time.
So when she encounters the brooding, solitary lord of the Underworld at the edge of her family’s woodland — it is Era who draws closer. Era who dares herself. Era who kisses him first.
What follows is a secret courtship woven in cello and violin duets in the summer woods, through clockwork arches that shimmer with past and future, through the slow unraveling of a man who has everything and feels nothing — until her. Hades is powerful, lonely, and quietly undone by a woman who has no fear of the dark.
But Era’s family forbids the match, with reasons that reach back further than Era knows. And when she is forced to send Hades away, his grief takes the night with him — and leaves the world in endless, blinding light.
To bring him back, Era must find her way through laughter, music, and dance, to the one truth she has always known: some stories are too important to let someone else tell.
Apocrypha of Era is a lyrical fairy tale retelling of the myth of Persephone and Hades — warm, witty, and beautifully told — for readers who believe a woman should always get to speak for herself.
Buy your copy on Amazon.
Publication date: January 2023.
Daphne Rackham 