The Mere Wife

The Mere Wife is a fierce, feminist retelling of the classic tale of Beowulf by New York Times bestselling author Maria Dahvana Headley.

To those who live there, Herot Hall is a paradise. With picket fences, gabled buildings, and wildflowers that seed themselves in ordered rows, the suburb is a self-sustaining community, enclosed and secure. But to those who live secretly along its periphery, Herot Hall is a fortress guarded by an intense network of gates, surveillance cameras, and motion-activated lights.

Dylan and Gren live on opposite sides of the perimeter, neither boy aware of the barriers erected to keep them apart. For Dylan and his mother, Willa, life moves at a charmingly slow pace. They flit between mothers' groups, playdates, cocktail hours, and dinner parties. Gren lives with his mother, Dana, just outside the limits of Herot Hall. A former soldier, Dana didn't want Gren, didn't plan Gren, and doesn't know how she got Gren. But now that she has him, she's determined to protect him from a world that sees him only as a monster.

When Gren crosses the border into Herot Hall and runs off with Dylan, he sets up a collision between Dana's and Willa's worlds that echoes the Beowulf story—and gives sharp, startling currency to the ancient epic poem.

A smart, tough modern flip of Beowulf.
- Margaret Atwood

Her prose is an exhilarating mixture of darkness and fire, striking the perfect balance between sparse and startlingly vivid ... There's real heart in The Mere Wife; even in its most shocking, bloody moments, it's ultimately the moving story of one woman's desire to protect her child, and of that child's yearning for connection ... But its roots are coiled deep in the old earth and the dark water, the place that nightmares come from, and dreams too.
- The Irish Times

The most surprising novel I've read this year ... Headley is the most fearsome warrior here, lunging and pivoting between ancient and modern realms, skewering class prejudices, defending the helpless and venturing into the dark crevices of our shameful fears. Someday The Mere Wife may take its place alongside such feminist classics as The Wide Sargasso Sea because in its own wicked and wickedly funny way it's just as insightful about how we make and kill our monsters.
- The Washington Post