In this collection, Rita Dove takes the characters of Demeter and Persephone out of the realm of Greek myth and places them in settings as various as Arizona, Mexico, and a bistro in Paris. This modern retelling of the classic mother-daughter tale, written in a verse-cycle of seven sections, is presented, according to Dove, “in homage and as counterpoint to Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus.” Through tightly wound sonnets, Dove goes beyond the myth to tell a story that moves through time and place and navigates the space between the world of classical mythology and the modern world as we know it.