The Summer That Birthed a Monster – 011

Dear Molly,

Ah… that night. You want the truth, not the tidy myth? Then let us light a fire and speak plainly.

It was the summer of 1816, and we were all a bit unmoored—drifting toward one another like half-drowned ideas. The world was cold that year. Crops failed. The skies sulked. They called it the year without a summer. We didn’t know that a volcano had darkened the heavens halfway across the world—we only knew the weather made everything feel apocalyptic.

We fled to Switzerland—Percy, myself, our infant son, and Claire. Claire, of course, had become entangled with Byron, and she insisted we follow him to Lake Geneva. Byron had taken up residence in a grand house called the Villa Diodati.

And it was there, in that strange, storm-blurred place, that the challenge was made.

But wait—perhaps you should meet them first, Molly.
Do you know Byron?