The Mere Wife

Maria Dahvana Headley
The Mere Wife

The Mere Wife
ISBN: 9781925713459
Publication Date: 30 July 2018

New York Times bestselling author Maria Dahvana Headley's fierce, feminist retelling of the classic tale of Beowulf To those who live there, Herot Hall is a paradise. With picket fences, gabled buildings, and wildflowers that seed themselves in ordered rows, the suburb is a self-sustaining community, enclosed and secure. But to those who live secretly along its periphery, Herot Hall is a fortress guarded by an intense network of gates, surveillance cameras, and motion-activated lights.

Dylan and Gren live on opposite sides of the perimeter, neither boy aware of the barriers erected to keep them apart. For Dylan and his mother, Willa, life moves at a charmingly slow pace. They flit between mothers' groups, playdates, cocktail hours, and dinner parties. Gren lives with his mother, Dana, just outside the limits of Herot Hall. A former soldier, Dana didn't want Gren, didn't plan Gren, and doesn't know how she got Gren. But now that she has him, she's determined to protect him from a world that sees him only as a monster.

When Gren crosses the border into Herot Hall and runs off with Dylan, he sets up a collision between Dana's and Willa's worlds that echoes the Beowulf story - and gives sharp, startling currency to the ancient epic poem.

About the Author

Maria Dahvana Headley is a #1 New York Times-bestselling author and editor, most recently of the novels Magonia, Aerie, and Queen of Kings and the memoir The Year of Yes. With Kat Howard she is the coauthor of The End of the Sentence, and with Neil Gaiman she is the coeditor of Unnatural Creatures. Her short stories have been short-listed for the Shirley Jackson, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards, and her work has been supported by the MacDowell Colony and by Arte Studio Ginestrelle, where the first draft of th...