The Return

The Descent is a four-book literary fantasy retelling of the Sumerian Inanna descent myth, drawing primarily from the hymns and narrative cycles of ancient Mesopotamia, including "Inanna's Descent to the Underworld," the "Dumuzi and Inanna" lyric cycle, and the hymns of Enheduanna (c. 2285-2250 BCE).

In the original mythology, Inanna - queen of heaven, goddess of love and war - descends to the underworld ruled by her sister Ereshkigal. She passes through seven gates, surrendering one divine garment at each. She is killed, hung on a hook for three days, and restored through the intervention of Enki. The condition of her return: a substitute must go in her place. Dumuzi, who did not mourn her absence, is named. He descends. His sister Geshtinanna volunteers to share the term: six months each, alternating. The seasons are born.

This series asks: what is the three thousand years before the descent? What happened at the rim? And what is the return - not the gate, not the ascent, but the life built on what the descent gave her?

The fourth book covers the five years after the ascent. It is a novel about carrying the weight of the cost of return, about the governance of the person who has been to the bottom of the world, about the language that gets made when the words do not yet exist, and about the both - the simultaneous truths the descent makes visible.

Enheduanna, who appears in the epilogue, was the daughter of Sargon of Akkad and high priestess of the moon god Nanna at Ur. She is the earliest named author in recorded history. Her hymns to Inanna survive in cuneiform on clay tablets, including "The Exaltation of Inanna" (Inninsagurra) and "Inanna and Ebih." The voice given her in the epilogue of this novel is imagined. The fact of her existence, and the fact that she wrote, is not.

The series is dedicated to the proposition that the first poets knew what they were doing.