Tales from Mnemosyne (Conversation Pieces)

Tales from Mnemosyne retells Classical myths, largely known from Ovid, in the voice and tradition of an Appalachian storyteller, in this case, the goddess Mnemosyne. As the goddess of Memory and mother of The Muses, she is uniquely qualified to set the record straight—to tell the true stories without the usual patriarchal propaganda, all the while keeping things fun and only slightly blasphemous. Mnemosyne, as a timeless goddess, knows now and then backwards and forwards and has as much to say about the here and now as way back when. These fourteen tales include the most famous—Daphne and Apollo, Europa and Jove, the Birth of Athena, Cupid and Psyche—along with some too-often-forgotten ones, such as Tiresias and his daughter Manto, and Oenone, the abandoned wife of Paris. Charon, appropriately, concludes the proceedings.