Fruit of the Dead - Paperback

by Rachel Lyon (Author)

Named a Best Book of the Year by Oprah Daily

* "Mesmerizing." --Town & Country * "Twisty and unsettling." --People * "Ancient Greece meets Succession by way of Emma Cline...deliciously dark." --Ruth Gilligan *

A "superb...refreshing" (The New York Times Book Review) reimagining of the myth of Persephone and Demeter set on a lush private island, exploring themes of addiction and sex, family, independence, and who holds the power in a modern underworld.

Camp counselor Cory Ansel, eighteen and aimless, afraid to face her high-strung single mother's disappointment, is no longer sure where home is when the father of one of her campers offers an alternative. The CEO of a pharmaceutical company, Rolo Picazo is wealthy, divorced, and magnetic. He is also intoxicated by Cory. When Rolo offers her a job, Cory quiets an internal warning and allows herself to be ferried to his private island. Plied with luxury and the opiates manufactured by his company, she tells herself she's in charge. Her mother, Emer, head of a teetering agricultural NGO, senses otherwise. With her daughter seemingly vanished, Emer crosses land and sea to heed a cry for help that only she can hear.

Alternating between the two women's perspectives, Fruit of the Dead incorporates its mythic inspiration with a light touch and devastating precision. The result is a tale that explores love, control, obliteration, and America's late-capitalist mythos. Lyon's reinvention of Persephone and Demeter's story makes for a haunting, electric novel that readers will not soon forget.

Author Biography

Rachel Lyon is the author of Self-Portrait with a Boy, a finalist for the Center for Fiction's 2018 First Novel Prize, and Fruit of the Dead, an Oprah Daily best book of 2024 which the New York Times called "superb" and "refreshing." Rachel's short stories have appeared in One Story, The Rumpus, Electric Literature, and other publications. She has taught most recently at Bennington College and the American University of Paris, where she was the 2024 Paris Writer in Residence. Originally from Brooklyn, New York, she lives with her family in Western Massachusetts.