The New Moon With the Old Moon in Her Arms: A True Story Assembled from Scholarly Hearsay

Each spring in Ancient Athens two scapegoats, a surrogate bride and groom, were ritually stoned to death on the 6th of Thargelion, the Day of Expulsion. The purpose was to rid the city of sickness, famine, and sinfulness; and the sacrificial victims were social castoffs given a year’s luxurious respite. But in the year 293 B. C., an attractive, unmarried poetess resolves to protest the rising patriarchy, as well as Athenian women’s declining status, by volunteering herself on the behalf of the moon goddess Circe. In this impassioned novel ("a true story assembled from scholarly hearsay"), the narrator’s diary of her final year is intercut with passages on Greek culture, from pharmacology to gemstones to fraudulent gods and heroes. All the while, her original idealism is being caught up in the reality of an unexpected love affair....