Fruit of the Dead - by Rachel Lyon

About the Book

"Camp counselor Cory Ansel, eighteen and aimless, afraid to face her high-strung single mother in New York, is no longer sure where home is when the father of one of her campers offers an alternative. The CEO of a Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company, Rolo Picazo is middle-aged, divorced, magnetic. He is also intoxicated by Cory. When Rolo proffers a childcare job (and an NDA), Cory quiets an internal warning and allows herself to be ferried to his private island. Plied with luxury and opiates manufactured by his company, she continues to tell herself she's in charge. Her mother Emer senses otherwise. With her daughter seemingly vanished, Emer crosses land and sea to heed a cry for help she alone is convinced she hears"--

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"Alternating between the perspective of mother and daughter, we can indulge in the full thrill of being young, reckless, and newly independent--and the full propulsive terror of being older and knowing better. Though Lyon pulls the bones of the story from ancient mythology, the book's characters are intensely--at times achingly--human and its plot is urgently contemporary." --Oprah Daily

"Twisty and unsettling." --People

"A mesmerizing, fantastic retelling of an ancient myth." --Town and Country

"Superb... refreshing... Lyon twists the tale just enough to needle our conceptions of coercion and desire." --New York Times Book Review

"Gorgeous prose that's so vivid and luminous it contrasts starkly with the darkness of the subject matter. Every sentence is a feast." --WBUR.org

"A Greek myth retelling! Wonders--and risks--abound." --Elle

"A mesmerizing, fantastic retelling of an ancient myth." --Town & Country

"Epic... Greek mythology enthusiasts will especially fall for this modern retelling of the myth of Persephone and Demeter." --Lilith Magazine

"Riveting and lush...a spellbinding account of a young woman's hunger for freedom, the sordid underbelly of big pharma, and the siren call of addiction." --Leslie Jamison

"In lush, hallucinatory prose, Lyon narrates from the perspectives of both mother and daughter and evokes the classic myth without distracting readers from the striking contemporary setting and subject matter." --Booklist, Starred Review

"Irresistible... brilliantly told... an affecting, engrossing, and resonant tale about lost innocence and the enduring bond between a mother and daughter." --Publisher's Weekly, Starred Review

"Lyon's skillful and luscious prose encourages empathy... an affecting novel with touches of the fantastical, weaving explorations of power, youth, wealth, and familial love." --Kirkus, Starred Review

"A gripping literary thriller, Fruit of the Dead presents a coming-of-age tale that is so well-observed and intoxicating that the reader will lose track of time, but won't forget how they spent it. Jennifer Egan and Emma Cline fans: assemble." --Caoilinn Hughes, author of The Wild Laughter

"Mesmerized and profoundly alarmed, I read this in one go; I've been haunted by it ever since. I've passionately loved Lyon's writing for years, and Fruit of the Dead further confirms what I've long suspected: I want to lunge to read anything she writes." --R. O. Kwon, author of Exhibit and The Incendiaries

"Ancient Greece meets Succession by way of Emma Cline, Fruit of the Dead is a deliciously dark examination of agency and power, and the savage complexity of the mother-daughter bond." --Ruth Gilligan, author of The Butchers

"A brutal, brilliant reimagining of the Persephone/Demeter story, shifted seamlessly into a 21st-century thriller of addiction. My heart was pounding for teenage Cory, coerced into a billionaire's Hades, and for her mother, who dismantles her own compromised life to bring her daughter back from the brink. Fruit of the Dead is a scathing and stunning indictment of patriarchal mythology." --Maria Dahvana Headley, author of The Mere Wife

"Irresistible and devastating. I devoured Fruit of the Dead in a single day. Lyon has spun an utterly absorbing, lush, and terror-laced retelling of an ancient, archetypal tale--a young woman tempted and taken, a mother's feral grief--that is both timeless and crisply contemporary." --Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood

"Opulent and unsettling, Fruit of the Dead explores the island where ancient myth meets the contemporary body. This story is vivid, shocking, evocative. It is both of this time and outside it. It is purely Rachel Lyon. It is wonderful." --Julia Phillips, author of Disappearing Earth

"In hallucinatory prose, Rachel Lyon evokes a world lush with pleasure and peril. She has an uncanny grasp on what it is to be a teenage girl, caught between the safety of a mother's love and the alluring offerings of adulthood. An all-consuming fever-dream of a novel, Fruit of the Dead pulls you under and refuses to let go." --Alexis Schaitkin, author of Saint X

"Rachel Lyon's genius, alluring novel is a mythic and modern love story: between mother and daughter, between a young woman and the danger she needs to experience, between her darkest and brightest selves. I read with my heart in my throat and my breath held, a total glutton for its sentences and Cory's propulsive, sparkling, and often terrifying journey." --Danielle Lazarin, author of Back Talk

"A brilliant and luminous reimagining of the Persephone myth. Lyon explores power, consent, motherhood, capitalism, and addiction, in prose as lush and entrancing as her book's seductive island setting. Incantatory and razor-sharp, Fruit of the Dead casts a powerful spell." --Jessie Chaffee, author of Florence in Ecstasy

About the Author

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.