The Mother of All Things (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780593700792)

A daring novel from the acclaimed author of Those Who Are Saved female rage, grief, and creativity collide in the present and animate the past, when a woman reconnects with her essential self during a summer journey, and discovers an ancient female world that offers parallels to her own

Kept busy by her obligations as a wife and mother, art history professor Ava Zaretsky has little time to devote to her research and writing. Now tagging along on her film-producer husband's shoot in Bulgaria for the summer, where she's mostly solo parenting her sweet son and rebellious budding tween daughter, she has a chance encounter with her fierce feminist mentor from college, which changes everything.

Ava is swept up into a circle of women who reenact ancient Greco-Roman mystery rites of initiation, bringing her research to life and illuminating the story of a 5th-century-BC mother-daughter pair whose sense of female loyalty to each other and connection to the divine feminine guides Ava in her exploration of the eternal stages of womanhood. Reaching across time and deep into the female psyche, The Mother of All Things delivers a revelatory tale of a woman coming to terms with her evolving sense of responsibility to herself and her family, as she achieves a new appreciation of the gifts of female wisdom and self-belief.

Author: Alexis Landau
ISBN-10: 0593700791
ISBN-13: 9780593700792
Publisher: Pantheon Books
Language: English
Published: 05/07/2024
Pages: 336
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.30lbs
Size: 9.70h x 7.10w x 1.30d

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 12/01/2023 pg. 2
Kirkus Reviews 03/15/2024
Publishers Weekly 03/18/2024
Booklist 04/01/2024 pg. 17