The Neon God

A Novel, by Ben D’Alessio

**This is the back cover blurb and opening chapter to my new novel, The Neon God. Available for pre-sale now.**

From the back cover:

In the suffocating bosom of August, Dionysus arrives in New Orleans. For too long, the Greek God of Revelry and Wine has endured the incessant bickering atop Mt. Olympus, and so he descends to be with the mortals and indulge himself in the city’s reputed decadence and vice.

When Dionysus is parched and aching for even a drop of the vine, he mistakenly stumbles into a bookstore and begs an employee who reminds him of the last pharaoh of Egypt — Cleopatra — to point him in the direction of wine. Zibby Dufossat, on the cusp of her first year of law school and desperate for a distraction, sets aside her anxieties to peel back the layers of the esoteric, anachronistic, and often offensive beautiful stranger, only to find heartache and pain. But before she can decipher this enigma, he disappears into the French Quarter fray of sweaty, gyrating lovers.

With grapevines sprouting from the path he walks and an unexplainable, addictive libido placing the city under his spell, the god deflects his retinue of Olympians and fantastical creatures attempting to deliver him back home. But it soon becomes clear that Dionysus alone can determine his fate, and the fates…