Medea

Differing accounts of Medea's story all agree in one significant regard: after deliberately murdering several innocent people, including her own children, Medea never met with any punishment, human or divine. Why was no penalty ever exacted from this classic embodiment of female rage? Set in Bronze Age Greece, the myth is here told in the form of a modern novel, eliminating none of the passion or violence. Medea is the awkward, introverted daughter of a royal family, growing up in a remote backwater of the Greek world. An escape from this stifling life is offered by the arrival of the dashing and feckless Jason, for whom Medea gives up everything to follow him back to mainland Greece. There she bears him twin sons, then watches helplessly as he falls out of love with her. His announcement that she will be exiled, minus her two boys, so that he can marry the king's daughter brings on the final catastrophe.