Dr. Frederic Pearl is a writer and archaeologist whose work explores the deep intersections of myth, memory, and power. Trained as an anthropologist, he brings decades of experience studying how societies encode authority, morality, and trauma through narrative—particularly in moments of cultural rupture and transformation.
His creative work draws heavily on Norse and early medieval Northern European mythology, reinterpreted through the lens of archaeology, comparative religion, and political anthropology. He is especially interested in sacred queenship, death cults, conversion myths, and the long afterlife of pre-Christian cosmologies as they surface in later religious and political systems.
Pearl is the author of Finnoola, a mythic science-fantasy novel that synthesizes Norse myth, early medieval history, and speculative cosmology into a morally serious narrative intended for both younger and adult readers. The book reflects a lifelong engagement with Freya, the Vanir–Æsir divide, and the symbolic worlds preserved in Gotlandic picture stones and early Scandinavian archaeology.
In parallel with his fiction, Pearl writes nonfiction under the pseudonym E. A. Mercer, examining constitutional imagination, political mythology, and the erosion of democratic legitimacy in the modern United States. Across genres, his work is unified by a single concern: how stories shape the limits of what societies believe is possible—or permissible.
He lives in California and continues to work as a consulting archaeologist while completing his long-form fiction and nonfiction projects.
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