The Mother of All Things

"From the author of the WWII novel Those Who Are Saved ("sweeping and lyrical"-People), comes an electrifying page-turner about female rage, grief, and creativity, as a contemporary mother immerses herself in ancient Greco-Roman female mystery rites while on a summer journey with her family. Ava, an adjunct art-history professor whose research and writing have been stymied by her life as a wife and mother in LA, joins her Hollywood film producer husband on a summer shoot in Bulgaria. During the demanding production schedule, Ava is mostly solo-parenting their young son and 13-year-old daughter, who is on the cusp of rebellion and sexual knowledge. In a chance encounter in Sofia, Ava reconnects with her fierce feminist mentor from college and is drawn into a circle of women who are reenacting Greco-Roman female rites of initiation based on the Eleusinian Mysteries. Ava's own research into those rites comes to life through Astra, a parallel mother in 5th-century BC Athens, whose story counterpoints and dovetails with Ava's, as Landau explores the eternal stages of womanhood across time. In The Mother of All Things, she delivers a sharply contemporary, relatable yet at times surreal tale of a wife and mother coming to terms with her evolving sense of responsibility to her children and husband, to her creative life, and to herself"–