The full story of Hercules’s twelve labors is rarely included in modern adaptations—I suppose murdering your own children in a fit of madness and then slaying a bunch of monsters in penance was a bit too grim for Disney. But John Wiswell (whose debut Someone You Can Build a Nest In blew me away last year) masterfully tackles this complicated legend in his new novel Wearing the Lion, which came out last month. If you love Greek myth reimaginings like Madeline Miller’s Circe that take on new perspectives and turn classic stories on their heads, you don’t want to miss this one!
Hera, Queen of Heaven and goddess of mothers and families, is sick of Zeus’s shit. When he bursts into Olympos bragging about the new demigod he’s just created, Hera becomes determined to destroy this latest living insult to her marriage. But young Heracles—whose name ironically means “Hera’s glory”—is unaware of the heavenly ire raining down on him and grows up worshiping “Auntie Hera” as his patron goddess. Hera tosses monsters and warriors his way, but the young hero’s Zeus-like strength grants him easy victories and he thanks her for each triumph. At her wits end, Hera sends down a Fury to drive Heracles mad. But in doing so, she betrays her own deepest values. Instead of destroying himself, Heracles kills his three young boys—innocent children, like those Hera is meant to watch over. While Heracles embarks on a journey to discover which god could treat him so cruelly, performing a series of impossible labors that each bring him one step closer to the truth, Hera struggles against accountability. She follows his journey, seeking to stall and distract Heracles while she wrestles with her guilt. But eventually Hera will have to face what she’s done. And then together she and Heracles will have to take on their most impossible feat yet—healing and moving forward.
Monster stories are some of the earliest precursors to the modern horror genre. They even pre-date written literature, with tales of massive, incomprehensible beasts that terrorize the earth featuring in the foundational myths of nearly every culture around the world. While many of these legends end happily with a hero slaying or incapacitating the monster, horror lingers in the mere depiction of the creature—usually involving a rapacious appetite, massive size, unusual capacity for destruction, and the features from multiple real-world animals combined into something fantastical. In Wearing the Lion, Wiswell leans into the visceral descriptions of the various monsters that Heracles faces in his labors, from the Hydra of Lerna—who lives in a fetid swamp and screams discordantly from multiple throats as its poisonous blood eats away at anything it touches—to the Bull of Crete, who exists at such a terrifying scale that the earth trembles when it walks and crevices open underneath its feet. Then Wiswell shows us how to love these creatures in all their monstrosity. Just because they are frightening doesn’t mean they can only be met with violence. Instead, Hercules’s aversion to violence after slaughtering his children allows him to lead with compassion. He, too, is a monster. And by treating these other monsters with love and kindness, he eventually learns how to accept love and kindness back into his own life.
Family is at the heart of Heracles’s story here. His trials begin when he kills his own blood family, but he ultimately heals through the creation of a loving found family. That found family just happens to be full of monsters. As he completes each labor by befriending the monster, he gains another member of his eclectic crew to join him in future labors. Readers, too, will come to love the Hydra, the Bull, the Lion of Nimea, the Hind of Ceryneia, and the Erymanthian Boar. While this new family can’t replace his lost sons, they provide him with much-needed love and comfort. Hera also discovers the importance of found family. Her blood family causes her mostly strife, with the constant philandering of her husband (and brother) Zeus and the striving and scheming of her son Ares. But she has two close companions, Até (a minor goddess of Ruin) and Granny (a retired Fury) who bring her the comfort and support that family should. In order to give them the same support, she’ll first have to unlearn some of the toxic dynamics that have become the norm in Olympian families. Both Hera and Heracles go through major character growth through the influence of their found families.
If you love monsters and would rather see them befriended than slain, John Wiswell is the author for you. I can’t recommend highly enough this beautiful and surprisingly uplifting Hercules re-telling. You can find Wearing the Lion on shelves now at your favorite local retailer, or buy it online and support The Gothic Library in the process using this Bookshop.org affiliate link. If you’ve read it, let me know your thoughts in the comments!