Sistren — Jane LeCompte

Nina Temple had counted on having plenty of time - decades of time - to mend the rift with her older sister. She'd put it off, and now the chance was gone.

In the wake of her sister Erika's violent death, Nina leaves her home and family and crosses the country to sift through the remnants of a life. She uncovers a past she doesn't recognize, an ancestry scarred by judgment and secrets. Enduring shock after shock, plagued by dreams, Nina comes unmoored from her sensible, orderly world and does unthinkable things. Is it possible that her sister's consciousness lingers in the home where she died? And can Nina escape the pattern of generations and step into her own power?

Like so many of us, Nina receives a summons from the Great Below - the darkness, the other, the hidden parts of the self. Her inner journey mirrors the Sumerian Descent of Inanna, that ancient, mythic venture into the underworld to make the connection between conscious and unconscious that opens the way for wisdom. Like Inanna, Nina is stripped of her defenses, lost, and then reborn through compassion into a larger self.