Inventing Memory — Anne L. Harris

A one-of-a-kind novel, like nothing you've ever read, Inventing Memory is a stunning blend of fantasy and reality, exposing the secret links between the mythic, the mundane, and the timeless mysteries of the human heart.

Shula is a slave in fabled Sumer--until Inanna, Queen of Heaven, appears before her. Chosen by the Goddess for reasons she cannot begin to fathom, Shula is freed from bondage and set upon an uncertain path toward a new and mysterious destiny. But the attention of the gods is a dangerous thing, and Shula may have cause to regret the day she first laid eyes on the Queen of Dawn . . .

Wendy Chrenko, former high school misfit, is now an overworked graduate student, researching her dissertation on "Remnants of Matriarchy in the Ancient Sumerian Inanna Cycle." Still smarting from the painful wounds of a long relationship that ended abruptly, Wendy is bound and determined to prove that men and women once lived together in perfect equality, even if it means volunteering for a bizarre and dangerous scientific experiment . . .

Separated by millennia, Shula and Wendy appear to be two very different women, leading completely separate lives.

Or maybe not.