Welcome, Judith Starkston, Author of Achilles's Wife

Judith Starkston

 Today, I (Donis) am proud to host Judith Starkston, author of Hand of Fire and Priestess of Ishana. Her fabulous new novel, Achilles's Wife, has just become available for purchase as of March 16.  Judy writes historical fantasy and mythic retellings set in the Bronze Age of the Greeks and Hittites. Her six novels bring women to the fore—whether Deidamia or Briseis from the Trojan War cycle of myths or a remarkable Hittite queen whom history forgot, even though she ruled over one of the greatest empires of the ancient world. Check out Judy's website at www.JudithStarkston.com.

Achilles’s Wife book cover image

The case of the Missing Mycenaean Palace: Setting Historical Fiction in Myth

My latest novel, Achilles’s Wife, arises from Greek myth and reinterprets the story of Achilles’s life before the Trojan War—when his divine mother conceals him on a remote Greek island to keep him out of the brewing Trojan War. But as a feminist novel focusing on female leadership and motherhood, its main character is a young woman, Deidamia (Mia), a princess on the Greek island of Skyros, daughter of King Lycomedes. 

Choosing a Royal Setting

Princesses and kings live in palaces or castles, of course, and a royal dwelling represents power and leadership, so it was important to me to “build” a palace that gave my overarching theme of governance—good and bad—a vivid physical rendering in the readers’ imaginations. 

Being the historian I am, I also wanted to be historically accurate for the Mycenaean, Late Bronze Age period when this mythic king and his daughter would have lived, if they were ever “real,” which they certainly could have been.

A Missing Palace

So, I found myself writing a novel set on the Greek island of Skyros because that is where, according to tradition, the myth I’d chosen took place. I soon encountered a problem as I researched this setting: the missing Mycenaean palace.

Archaeology from a Previous Era

There’s not a great deal published in scholarly research about the archaeology of Skyros. Moreover, the gorgeous archaeological site that has been excavated on the island, called Palamari, dates to the Early Bronze Age. Its final habitation is about 1700 BCE. I was aiming for somewhere more or less around 1250 BCE within the Late Bronze Age to be a credible palace for Lycomedes. But this is a mythic retelling, not precise historical fiction, so I used my knowledge of Mycenaean architecture and borrowed some of the vivid setting details from Palamari. Voila! A fine palace of Lycomedes.

Or so I thought. Then, deep into writing this manuscript, my husband and I decided we wanted to travel. Our last international trip had been pre-Covid. In about a month, I planned a trip to Skyros and Santorini. In the process, I tracked down a Greek archaeologist, Christina Romanou, who fairly recently had published about the Palamari site. I was looking for help identifying local people familiar with the dig. I have found such connections hugely helpful in my past research travels.

Locating the Missing Mycenaean Palace

Ms. Romanou was very helpful. She gave me names of people who’d worked on the dig and could be located at the archaeology museum or guarding the site. But more significantly for my novel in progress and my inner accurate historian, she told me about the likely location of Lycomedes’s palace. It turned out there was evidence of where a Mycenaean palace had once stood, whether the mythical king lived there or not.

Palace atop rocky mountain, medieval ruins visible (photo: author’s own)

Not Much Left

The Palamari site I’d previously focused on for the palace lies on the northerneastern portion of the island. Long before my characters would have arrived on the scene, the residents of this city abandoned it (possibly when a volcano-caused tsunami consumed a huge chunk of the settlement). My Mia and Achilles could explore the dramatic ruins of horseshoe-shaped bastions and stone walls. The site is so atmospheric that I incorporated this haunted city as a key location in my plot, even when I had to give up on it as the site of the Mycenaean royal seat. But Palamari did not solve my missing palace problem.

Also on the eastern coast, but toward the middle of the island, rises a steep, rocky mountain. It’s currently topped with Classical, Medieval, and Ottoman ruins and a still-functioning monastery. I’d never heard a word about a Mycenaean palace there. 

However, Ms. Romanou gave me the essential information. Soundings taken on the acropolis area of that mountain revealed Mycenaean ruins. The many layers of later use have wiped away any significant trace of this palace, but at least we know where it was. I spent hours climbing (600 steps or so from the base of the mountain, through village to acropolis) and crawling around the acropolis area where the soundings place a palace. I was ready to site my imaginary palace and citadel.

My Fictional Palace Becomes Real

Instead of a broad bluff over the sea, my novel portrays a rocky mountaintop location. Since my characters, early in the novel, do some illicit escaping from said palace, this took some major rewriting. There are, after all, many steps and dangerous heights to scale, although there is a lovely river valley cutting in midway from the facing mountain range, so Mia did not need to go all the way down to the beach.

 

But my rewriting developed in other unanticipated ways. I love to write from concrete details. I had been suffering from a sense of amorphousness of place. I don’t write as well without the inspiration of real locations: the smells, the sights, the textures, and the geographic realities. Finding the true location and spending a lot of time there in person ended up meaning even more to me than success in achieving historical accuracy. Myth retellings need to create a lifelike immersion. I felt this story becoming fully convincing once I held that rocky mountaintop on Skyros in my heart. 

Palamari site, “haunted” city with horseshoe bastion (photo: author’s own

The Novel, Achilles’s Wife

Here is a brief book description of Achilles’s Wife:

In an ancient kingdom, a princess takes inspiration from a visiting young woman to challenge her father’s views and reach for leadership—and then discovers her muse is a man. 

The goddess mother of Greek mythology’s most famous warrior, Achilles, will do anything to prevent her son’s fated early death. In a desperate move, she hides Achilles, against his will, on an island—disguised in a girl’s body.

Tormented by inner discord, the miscast “girl” befriends Mia, the eldest daughter of the island’s king, launching a transformation of Mia’s own. Armed with a new vision she believes comes from a girl, Mia contends with family secrets, a controlling father, her destiny to rule, and the wrath of a goddess. 

When fate reveals Achilles’s identity, a divine mother’s fury drives Mia and Achilles into marriage. Mia must navigate her love for a man with a divided heart and a dangerous measure of immortality. Balancing governance and motherhood, Mia will face an unbearable choice.

________

Achilles' Wife is available on Amazon, Bookshop, or at Judith's website,  https://www.judithstarkston.com/

Guest Blogger Judith Starkston

Type M is honored to welcome our weekend guest blogger, the inimitable Judith Starkston. Judy has two degrees in Classics from the University of California, Santa Cruz and Cornell. She loves myths and telling stories. This has gradually gotten more and more out of hand. Her solution: to write fantasy set in the exotic worlds of the past. Her first novel, Hand of Fire, set during the Trojan War, was a semi-finalist for the M.M. Bennett’s Award for Historical Fiction. Priestess of Ishana, featuring Bronze Age Hittite priestess Tesha, won the San Diego State University Conference Choice Award. Her latest Tesha novel, Of Kings and Griffins, about a vicious king, vengeful griffins, and a scheming goddess, is available now on Amazon. As Judith says so succinctly, we all need a good escape these days!

Many thanks to Donis Casey for inviting me to visit on Type M for Murder today and tell you about my latest book, Of Kings and Griffins.

Of Kings and Griffins starts with a corpse—adorned with a gold sun disk and lying on an ebony bier—but it isn’t a murder mystery. The question is not who done it, but what happens next. The stakes quickly turn to life and death. Set in a Bronze Age empire that suffers from sometimes modern-feeling crises, the book is about a world upended when the king dies and his heir isn’t really up to the job, no matter what he thinks. The new ruler has insecurities and arrogance that make him unpredictable, but there are few limits on his power, and he’s chafing even at those.

Within this dangerous context, the main character, Tesha, a young woman who is both a priestess and a lesser queen, tries to forge a safe path for her husband, daughter, and sister, as well as her small, fractious kingdom that is part of the great empire this new king reigns over. Her tools to accomplish this goal of safety and happiness are intriguing and sometimes frustrating. Her husband is the most successful military leader of the time, but that draws the new king’s jealousy. She uses her strategic mind along with her diplomatic skills, but those processes are slow and the results ambiguous. She’s always counted on the active support of the goddess of love and war, but Tesha also has her own magic. The old king created a loophole for her to exercise her powers to benefit his empire, but sorcery is forbidden. Now his son views her abilities with intense suspicion and that loophole is turning into a snare. Even her goddess may be laying traps. When her sister disappears into the land of griffins, mythical beasts whom Tesha’s sister has warned her to fear, Tesha believes she has to take extreme action. But the temptation to seize control through her magical powers—justified to keep her family and country safe—may be the biggest danger of all. 

My historical fantasy is based on the life of a Hittite queen who was all but forgotten by history. The rites she practiced as a priestess, which have come down to us on clay tablets, offer tantalizing windows into their religious magic. I have melded this Hittite predilection for psychologically fascinating magic with events from Hittite history, and created a potent mix of politics, fantasy, romance, and intrigue. The griffins, who take a major role in this book, are depicted throughout Hittite artwork, even on the walls of throne rooms. As far as history can tell, they never actually entered into the plots and schemes of men and women, but I can vouch that they are way more fun than dragons.

And we all need a really good escape these days.

Of Kings and Griffins is book 3 in the Tesha series but is easily read as a standalone. Jump right in with this book.

If you would like to learn more about Judith Starkston, this series, or its historical background, go to her website. Sign up for her newsletter to receive book news and giveaways, a short story and Bronze Age cookbook.