In present day Montreal, a young woman by the name of Percy vanishes from the streets. The woman's parents - her father, a famous musician, and her mother, a witch - are frantic. Soon after the woman's disappearance strange phenomena sweep the globe: snow and ice fall of season in record amounts, blanketing whole countries. World-wide crop failures are announced, droughts become widespread, and then the worst happens: daylight fails to appear.... What follows is the epic tale of Percy's voyage through the Underworld, whose rules of existence are as unfathomable as the mysterious red flowers that suddenly blanket its fields. As daylight touches the dark realm, Percy unwittingly becomes the permanent guest of the Underworld's charismatic lord Pluto. And when her best friend Simon, a descendant of a long line of shamans, descends in an effort to save her, the three embark on a life and death race to figure out what - or who - has upset the balance between the two worlds...before it's too late.... Wonder-filled, imaginative, and compelling, L.E. Sterling's sophomore novel immerses readers in a magical world where existence itself is ordered by the tenuous balance between light and dark, and the story-filled pages of one remarkable book.

L.E. Vollick was born in Parry Sound, Ontario, and lived in Edmonton before reocating to Toronto and Montreal. She received a B.A. in creative writing and women's studies from York University, and an M.A. in the creative writing stream of English at Concordia University, Montreal. Currently she is a Ph.d candidate in English at McGill University.

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Vollick has published poetry and fiction in The WIER Tap Anthology (1992), dig: a journal for poetry (1994), Existere Magazine (1992-94), and The Headlight Anthology (1999, 2000). A chapter of The Originals appeared in Matrix Magazine (Fall, 2000). She was awarded first prize in the 1997 Robbie Burns Poetry Contest out of York University. The Originals is her first novel.

L.E. Vollick's profile page

'As far as retellings of ancient myths go, L.E. Sterlings urban fantasy novel is an especially imaginative one told in lucid yet dream-like detail. Sterling has woven a tale of admirable complexity.' -- Montreal Review of Books Summer 2013