Megan Collins Hatfield (Poetry ’08) is publishing her novel! Persephone’s Sister will be published by Touchstone, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, in spring 2019.
Below is a blurb of the book from Megan herself:
Sixteen years ago, Sylvie’s sister never came home. Persephone, out too late with the boyfriend she was forbidden to see, was missing for three days before her body was found — and her murder is still unsolved. Now Sylvie’s back in town reluctantly caring for her cancer-stricken mother, Annie. Prone to unexplained Dark Days even before Persephone’s death, Annie’s once-close bond with Sylvie completely dissolved in the days after. To make matters worse, Persephone’s boyfriend Ben is now a nurse at the cancer center where Annie is being treated. Sylvie’s always believed Ben was responsible for the murder—but she’s also carrying her own secret guilt over the night Persephone didn’t come home, guilt that’s trapping her in the past while the world goes on around her. As she navigates the uncomfortably revived relationship with her mother, Sylvie begins to gently dig into the secrets that fill their house—and what really happened the night Persephone died.
As indicated by its title, the novel is influenced by the Greek myth of Persephone and Demeter. In particular, I was interested in the idea of what might have happened had Demeter had another daughter who was left to fend for herself in the wake of her mother’s grief over losing Persephone.
Congratulations, Megan!
Megan Collins holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University (Poetry ’08). She teaches creative writing at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts in Connecticut, and she is the Managing Editor of 3Elements Review. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, her work has appeared in many journals, including Off the Coast, Rattle, Spillway, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal.
