The Dionysus issue of Pantheon Magazine brings forth the resentments of the past, the madness of the present, and, finally, the future of letting go. A pair find themselves outside the city limits to nowhere, a team of researchers find mystery and beauty in the Kahllian Dome-Plains, and a man whose palate craves the most exotic cuts of meat battles the phantoms of a previous life. These stories and more in this collection inspired by Dionysus, god of wine, ecstasy, and ritual madness.

Motherland is inspired by stories from author Maria Hummel's father and his German childhood, and letters between her grandparents that were hidden in an attic wall for fifty years. It is the author's attempt to reckon with the paradox of her father--a product of her grandparents' fiercely protective love and their status as Mitlaufer, Germans who "went along" with Nazism, reaping its benefits and later paying the consequences.

At the center of Motherland lies the Kappus family: Frank is a reconstructive surgeon who lost his beloved wife in childbirth and two months later marries a...