It all started with a nice, average guy shooting off his mouth to a pretty girl. His boss wasn’t taking him seriously. They needed to think like a criminal; do a grid search of the Green Trail for more bodies. She must stay away from her favorite hiking spot and especially stay out of the woods (insert a metaphorical pat-on-the-head-for-the-good-girl here). It was his tone of voice that did it. The next morning, the girl and her dog tramp into the undergrowth of the Trail—armed with a machete and thinking like a man trying to avoid the consequences of his actions. And do you think Ned McKick, Behavioral Profiler, is grateful for the heads up concerning the location of a maggot-infested corpse exactly where he predicted one would be? Not even close. Now, all Persephone Royall has to do is make sure her husband doesn't find out.

From the outside, hers looks like a perfect existence. A loving and attentive husband, Roy is tall and powerful in contrast to her diminutive and scintillating form. But a healthy inheritance and expansive home strengthen the shiny cage in which Persey is a prisoner to Roy's rages and his mother's constant nagging for a grandchild (ironically, the namesake of the embodiment of the Earth's fertility is intentially sterile). Roy's best friend (creep) leers at Persey, who is not allowed to have friends of her own. The parallels between Persey's story and Demeter's daughter are unmistakable: deceit, rape, fertility, imprisonment, and a mother's grief all play their part. Demeter turned her back on creation, ignoring the world, until Zeus negotiated Persephone's conditional release from The Underworld. Who is going to negotiate for Persey?

Persey eliminated a constraint when she picked up that machete. As each piece of the tightly coiled fiction was loosed, I waited for the revelation to come. Using the only thing that can't be stolen, Persey finally springs into the light, and the distraint she commands is in no way conditional. It added to the verisimilitude of her voluntary captivity that, even though she had most of the pieces, she couldn't imagine the extent of the deception until it was spelled out. Neither could I.