Seattle-base author Lauren J.A. Bear reimagines characters from Greek mythology in “Medusa’s Sisters,” a debut novel.

“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” “Wide Sargasso Sea” and “My Jim” are some of my favorite retellings of classic tales — wherein an author revisits a story conceived of by another writer from long ago and reimagines it from a different point of view.

A new contribution to this literary niche of counternarratives is “Medusa’s Sisters,” by Seattle-based writer Lauren J.A. Bear.

For millennia, Medusa has been remembered as the terrifying Gorgon with a headful of snakes instead of hair, and a truly petrifying gaze. But her sisters Stheno and Euryale, although classified as immortal, had mostly vanished into the mists of ancient Greek mythology.

Bear, a former middle school humanities teacher, gleaned what scraps of information she could from the writings of Homer and his successors. She realized that the sisters had been dismissed as mere appendages by classical scholars. The author decided to revisit Medusa’s tragic tale and revive her sisters, too.

This week’s book

“Medusa’s Sisters,” by Lauren J.A. Bear

ACE — $28 — 368 pp

All three sisters share sea monster deity parents, but instead of being born with any features such as talons, tails or fangs, they are born in human form, and conventionally pretty at that.

Stheno is the eldest, Euryale is the middle sister and the youngest sister is Medusa.

“Dispel everything the poets — who never met her — penned,” Bear writes. “She was ebullient, the paradigm of magnanimity.”

Like her sisters, Medusa was beautiful, but unlike them, she was mortal. Every sibling relationship has complicated dynamics. In this particular trio’s case, Stheno becomes the protector, with her chief focus on Medusa, the youngest and most vulnerable.

Feeling overlooked as the middle sister, Euryale develops a jealous nature.

In any case, all three are disdained by their sea monster kin for their ordinary features, so the sisters search for acceptance in other places. They find it variously in human society and in the realm of the gods.

But when they unwittingly get caught in the midst of a feud, a vengeful goddess transforms them into the terrifying hags known as Gorgons. This is just the bare-bones outline of a much more complicated tale that Bear crafts with exquisite care.

Bear’s elegant descriptions of place lead readers into a world that once existed vividly, even if only in people’s imaginations. Her insights into interpersonal relationships are sympathetic but also keenly perceptive. The narrative alternates between first-person observations of Stheno’s and Euryale’s more reticent, third-person limited view. The author moves fluidly between the two.

The pacing is deliciously deliberate, charming readers into a sense of well-being, then punctuating the mood with unintended consequences brought on by simple sibling pettiness or devastating violence inflicted by the wanton impetuosity of the gods. (There are a few explicit scenes.)

Remarkably, “Medusa’s Sisters” is Bear’s debut novel, and what a dazzling debut it is. This book is an invitation to rekindle one’s acquaintance with the power of Greek mythology.