Goddess of Yesterday (31 page)

Odysseus has been struggling to get home for a decade, and supposedly
The Odyssey
is the story of his travels. But the book is really about his son, Telemachus. This now twentyyear-old boy has never had a father because Odysseus left when he was a baby. A terrible situation has arisen at home; the boy cannot cope and has no solution.
The Odyssey
feels contemporary: a boy with an absent father, weak mother and uninvolved grandfather. Telemachus is constantly dreaming of his father, whose return would make everything perfect.

Not told by Homer are the final stories of the Trojans. The son of Hector and Andromache is killed when the Greeks toss the little boy off the walls of Troy. Andromache is made a slave to a son of Achilles called Neoptolemus, one of the men who hid in the wooden horse. Neoptolemus marries Hermione, the daughter Helen left behind.

The only son of Priam not to die in the war is Helenus, Cassandra's twin and also a prophet. Helenus is spared and goes to live in Epirus. Neoptolemus gives him Andromache to marry, so at least one good thing happens to Andromache in the end. After Neoptolemus is killed, Hermione marries her cousin Orestes (the one who killed his mother to avenge his father).

Ancient Greek is not pronounced the way it looks. If it were English, for example, Hermione would be pronounced
HER mee own.
But the Greek is
her MY oh nee.
Menelaus is not
MENNUH luss
but
menna LAY us.
Andromache is
an DROM uh kee.

For more information about Troy, the Bronze Age and the historicity of Homer (that is, how much is fiction and how much is fact), read Michael Wood's
In Search of the Trojan War.

Published by
Dell Laurel-Leaf
an imprint of
Random House Children's Books
a division of Random House, Inc.
New York

If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

Copyright © 2002 by Caroline B. Cooney

Maps copyright © 2002 by Virginia Norey

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address Delacorte Press.

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eISBN: 978-0-307-48549-6

RL: 6.1

Reprinted by arrangement with Delacorte Press

November 2003

v3.0