The Daughters

An electrifying new novel from Leslie Jamison, one of our most beloved contemporary voices: the epic story of three women connected by the haunting power of an ancient myth

Every monster has two mothers—the woman who bore him, and the pain that shapes him. They raise him together.

Knossos, 1550 BC: Newly wed to the tyrannical King Minos, the witch queen Pasiphaë makes a dangerous bargain. After giving birth to the legendary Minotaur, a creature she can barely fathom, she must wrestle with what it means to love a son the world calls monstrous.
  
New York, 1944: Beth yearns for something more than her picture-perfect life in the suburbs. But when an old friend calls and an image from the ancient past takes hold of her, Beth’s cloistered world cracks open, forcing her to make an impossible choice.
  
Crete, 1997: Reeling from grief after her father’s death, Jac finds unexpected solace with a mysterious community of women living in the hills of Crete. Under the thrall of the women’s charismatic leader, Jac feels compelled to stay. But the longer she remains, the darker the secrets she uncovers.
  
Full of the riveting prose and piercing insights that have made Jamison one of our most cherished nonfiction writers, The Daughters is a gripping novel that sweeps across centuries—a spellbinding exploration of desire, devotion, and the complexities of our deepest human bonds.

• “Leslie Jamison’s The Daughters is a powerhouse, blistering and frank. Jamison builds ravishing eddies of chaos and redemption. There’s centripetal delight in all the vortical whoosh, in seeing the universal unspoken set down in ink. I’ll be thinking about The Daughters—its final pages, its final line—forever.”
  Kaveh Akbar, National Book Award finalist and Dayton Literary Peace Prize–winning author of Martyr!