A diary. A silver dagger. An ancient Greek text encased in gold.

These were the only belongings left behind by Alex’s mother, shoved in a box with her name on it—Elena de la Fuente—and forgotten for ten years.

On the surface, Alex Montgomery has it all. She grew up in the manicured suburbia of New York. She has Warren, a Prince-Charming boyfriend who wants to marry her. And she goes to Harvard, her father’s alma mater. But there is one blemish on her otherwise perfect life: the night before her tenth birthday her mother disappeared into thin air, leaving no trace or means of contacting her.

Silenced by shame and anger at a mother who abandoned her husband and daughter, Alex shut out every memory she had of her. But opening the box with her mother’s name on it awakens all the old doubts she had buried inside, along with the most burning question: Why did her mother leave?

Following the clues in her mother’s diary, Alex abandons her studies and drives across the country to Tierra del Sol, a small town surrounded by California’s mystical southern deserts, where her mother had attended the New Academy. There, Alex meets the young, charming Classics professor, Ari, the booksmart romantic, Penélope, and the moody, black-clad Zeb. But as the mystery of her mother’s disappearance unfolds, Alex stumbles upon a hidden door to a magical city where a tyrant King stifles the once-vibrant streets and harbors.

The hunt for her mother’s fate entangles Alex and her friends in the political turmoil of the city as they piece together the fragments of an age-old prophecy and the forgotten myth of the Emerald Stone. According to a lost hymn to Hermes, legend tells that the Emerald Stone contains the secret of the universe, which has the power to overthrow Zeus, the King of the Gods, and restore Gaia, Mother Earth, as Queen. But not everyone wishes to see the Old Faith restored.

On the run from hidden enemies—not all of them mortal—and chasing the ghost of her mother, Alex realizes that the prophecy runs deeper than mere myth and that her mother might not be who Alex thought she was. But in confronting her mother’s precarious past, Alex must face the doubts in her own life, such as her strained relationship with Warren, her secret attraction to the older, dark-haired Ari, and the possibility that she, like her mother, will leave it all behind.

Paralleled with the ancient, recurring story of Helen of Troy leaving her husband and daughter for love, The Song of Gaia tells a two-fold tale of womanhood as its own ancient legacy and the forging of a new one.