Eugenia Collier

The Day the Gods Wept Eugenia Collier

Vesuvius eruption Eugenia Collier's novel The Day the Gods Wept provides a suspenseful, fascinating, and intimate portrayal of Pompeii's residents on the fateful day Vesuvius erupted. Victoria-Julia, a 19-year-old whose family perished in an earthquake, awakens unable to remember the events of the previous night, and why her hands are covered with dried blood. Marcella, the blind beggar and soothsayer awakens alone and frantic; she tries in vain to warn the people of Pompeii that today is their last day. Lucius, the aging, wealthy baker, awakens wanting sex with his young wife. His wife, the beautiful Augusta, awakens and hurries off to meet her lover Fabius, a handsome aspiring actor. But Fabius will not awaken on this day, unlike Tertius, a slave whose tragic past has filled him with both rage and compassion. Tertius thinks he will awaken to yet another day of dehumanizing labor. He is wrong. Geological and emotional pressures increase until they are uncontainable; an ear-splitting BOOM! violently smashes the mountaintop as an umbrella cloud of molten rock, ash and pumice shoots into the air. Yet The Day the Gods Wept is not about monumental despair. It is also a novel of hope. For it affirms the kinship of all people regardless of differences in time and place. And in spite of widespread death, it affirms the persistence of life.