Persephone loses her innocence in the Underworld, but finds herself. She is Everywoman coming through darkness, betrayal and disillusion to discover a new life, a new sense of herself. And she is many women in Jenny Joseph's extraordinary novel, which retells the Greek myth of spring and winter, of good and evil. Demeter the earth goddess is every worried mother struggling to understand her daughter. Hades is the reckless man, brutal, possessive, but mellowed by the girl he takes for himself, the woman who goes back to him. In Persephone, Jenny Joseph has created a new kind of novel, a story made up of many stories, our stories, using poetry, narrative, parody and many other kinds of writing. Like the myth itself, Persephone is unforgettable. The book won her the 1986 James Black Memorial Prize for Fiction.