"The gods do not always notice what is going on. They are looking at something else, thinking about something else. They get distracted. So they also go astray. They do not understand, they make mistakes, they get confused. And sometimes they miss something that might have been important". A mother throws her newborn son into the void because he is weak and deformed. The mother is Hera, Queen of Heaven; the son is a god, Hephaestus. He falls from Mount Olympus for nine days and nights until he lands at the bottom of the sea. He is picked up by two nymphs, Thetis and Eurinome, who will raise him in the heart of the deep. There, Hephaestus will learn to find peace in fire: he will melt metals, forge jewelry, and become such a famous artist that even Hera will be captivated by his creations. But those who have been abandoned have a wound that is always open, and perhaps art is only one way to heal it. The fire god told by Paola Mastrocola is a humble and brilliant god, restless and tormented, drawn to the unfathomable mystery that links eternity to death. And he is a son full of rage, who continues to search for his mother, even hating her after being rejected by her. There is no single truth in myth, the author seems to be telling us, and that makes us free: to add, take away, modify, rewrite, interpret. To invent infinite versions, because the story is infinite. With the novel of Hephaestus, the artist god who only wanted to feel loved, Mastrocola tells us about us, about our insecurities, about how terrible but also exhilarating it is to cross certain loneliness. And almost ten years after Love Before Us, he confirms once again that we will always need myths, because they dialog with what is most human, pure and fragile in us.