Death's Country

HADESTOWN meets LAKELORE in this queer “Orpheus and Eurydice” retelling in verse, following two Miami teens who travel to the underworld to retrieve their girlfriend’s soul.

Critically acclaimed author R.M. Romero has crafted a masterpiece of magical realism and poignant love letter to queer and Latin American diaspora teens.

Miami teens Andres, Renee, and Liora found something unexpected during their sophomore year of high school: each other. The three become a polyamorous triad, happy despite how no one at school seems to understand their relationship.

But when an accident leaves Liora in a coma, hovering between life and death, Andres and Renee are shattered. Until Renee proposes a radical solution: she and Andres must go into the underworld to retrieve Liora’s spirit, so they can reunite it with her body before it’s too late.

To find their lost love, Andres and Renee navigate a landscape of souls who bleed color, rivers of scorpions, and a host of monsters. But finding Liora’s spirit is only the first step to returning to the living world. Because Andres has been to the underworld before, thanks to his own near-death experience years earlier, and he left a part of himself in its shadows. It’s a part of himself he’s in no hurry to meet again…but it is eager to be reunited with him. 

Death’s Country is a magical realism tale about confronting the darkest parts of ourselves. R.M. Romero (The Ghosts of Rose Hill) once again dazzles in verse as lush and vibrant as the Miami skyline, crafting an openhearted and powerful story about the hard-earned yet redemptive nature of healing.