Discover the untold story of Enheduanna, the world’s first named author, as she navigates power, betrayal, and divine destiny in ancient Mesopotamia. A mesmerizing fusion of history, myth, and female leadership that challenges how we see the past—and ourselves.
A high priestess dethroned. A rebel with a dangerous plan. One empire hanging by a thread.
When Enheduanna is named High Priestess of Ur, her connection to the gods makes her a target. Lugalanne’s coup strips her of robes, power, and home, casting her into the perilous underworld. There, amid forests of shadows and treacherous trials, she discovers that divine favor alone won’t save her—only cunning, courage, and a willingness to embrace the ruthlessness of her enemies can restore her.
Drawing on history and myth, Enheduanna’s Song From the Sands follows the world’s first named author as she fights to reclaim her voice and her destiny. Political intrigue, betrayal, and divine tests collide as Enheduanna must decide whether to forgive, to fight, or to harness the power that could shake the foundations of an empire. For readers who love The Song of Achilles’s intimate heroism, Circe’s mythic depth, or The Daughters of Sparta’s fierce women, this is a mesmerizing dive into ancient Mesopotamia where courage and cunning are the only paths to survival.
Praise for Enheduanna's Song From The Sands:
"In finely detailed prose, Ellen Rachlin brings Enheduanna, daughter of Sargon, to life, as well as the mythic figures of Inanna and Ereshkigal of the Underworld. Enheduanna’s Song From the Sands is filled with conflict and intensity, each quest, not only a matter of achieving power, but of life and death."
~ Regina McBride, author of Stranger from Across the Sea
"Enheduanna was such a powerful FMC in this book and woman in real life, I’m truly so grateful to have learned about her. Ellen Rachlin’s writing captures the powerful and divine moments of Enheduanna’s life and suspends them before you so you may be there right alongside..."
~ Morgan, ARC Reviewer
"Enheduanna's hymns to the goddess Inanna are the first known literary works to name an author. Rachlin brings her to life in this novel set in 2300 BCE, a novel of sex, war, love, a baby in a basket, and a woman creating a new order of being. It’s historical fiction writing that reminds the reader of Hilary Mantel, you can’t put it down. You want to follow the priestess to bed, to rise, to her last fighting breath. Rachlin won’t let you put this book down."
~ Kate Gale, author of Under a Neon Sun and Little Soldiers
Who was Enheduanna?
Enheduanna, the world's first named author, High Priestess of Ur, and daughter of Sargon the Great, the world's first emperor lived in an era when religion, politics, and commerce were intertwined, and the gods determined one's fate. The society was well-organized, the rules were sophisticated, yet there was quite a bit of brutality. This was ~2300 BCE in ancient Mesopotamia.
The only extant image of Enheduanna, central figure in artifact.
She evolves from a naïve, kind teenager into a vengeful woman and then back to compassion and humility. To survive, she has to be relentlessly determined. Initially, Enheduanna doesn’t realize that she inherited her father's enemies, including the children of those enemies.
Enheduanna idolizes her father who prioritized securing her an independent and powerful future. He respected that his wife and Enheduanna's mother was strong-willed and independent and he wanted that for his daughter. This becomes part of her psyche—to carry out what she believes would have made her father proud. As well, Enheduanna's grandmother who was a high priestess comes to Enheduanna in a vision. In that vision, she urges her granddaughter to become as memorable as the great men of their time. Enheduanna believes that she has a destiny to fulfil and she is determined to do just that. She finds herself alone, pushing this agenda after her father passed away. When her brothers offer reluctant support and rebels violently oppose her installation as a religious leader, this only makes her more determined.
Everyone in a position of power who is alive either doesn't care about her fate or wants her removed. Enheduanna has to plead to her brother, the King of Akkad, to carry out their father's wishes. He only acquiesces when he realizes that appointing her in the heart of rebel territory, ancient Sumer, will insult the local population. He sends her there with little in the way of protective forces. While traveling to Ur, she has a traumatic encounter with the rebel most angered by her appointment. Instead of defeating her, he enrages her. This begins her brutal reign in Sumer. She succeeds with this approach for a while but when it fails, which it does spectacularly, she must find another way. She refuses to relinquish her dream of leading her followers in Ur and Uruk.
But Enheduanna's conflicts are far from solely external. Just before she assumes her post as a high priestess, a rebel named Lugalanne brutally targets her. Only then does she realize the depth of his animosity. The humiliation forces her to choose to prove herself or retreat. She chooses to become as ruthless as the people she fights. And in her world, the favor of the right god matters, and who better to understand her needs than the terrifying god of the underworld, Ereshkigal. When accompanied by her god husband, Enheduanna is permitted to travel to the underworld, a place where the living are forbidden. She craves this journey and this is how she learns to hold her enemies at bay.
The author's visualisation of Enheduanna.
Ultimately, this costs the people close to her, her god husband, and eventually, her temple. She defended her territory at a high price: her followers and supporters fear her wrath. She has to reckon with all of this, including her costly alliance with Ereshkigal, before she can make amends to the people of her region and be restored as high priestess. She discovers that she must find her way into the god Inanna's favor, as she is the one god who can truly help Enheduanna. Violence can't subdue a god; Enheduanna turns to her gift of writing to make her case and honor the gods. Through her deepening understanding of what true leadership demands, she comes to realize that real power is in compassion.
This realization makes her the world’s first named author.
Ellen Rachlin’s poetry has appeared in American Poetry Review, Comstock Review, Granta, Court Green, Literary Imagination, and various anthologies. She has published two collections of her poems, Until Crazy Catches Me (Antrim House, 2008) and Permeable Divide (Antrim House, 2017), winner of the 2018 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Silver Award.
She has a historical fiction novel, Enheduanna’s Song From the Sands, based on the life of Enheduanna, the Akkadian high priestess and world’s first-named author, forthcoming from Histria Books and a collection of poems, At the Big Bang Resort, forthcoming from Red Hen Press.
She is also the author of two chapbooks, Waiting for Here (Finishing Line Press, 2004), a finalist in the New Women's Voices series, and Captive to Residue (Flarestack Publishing, 2009). She received her MFA from Antioch University. She serves as treasurer of the Poetry Society of America and is a partner at Blue Leaf Ventures.
Other writing genres include numerous textbook and journal articles on the subject of finance and investing with various publishers including Wiley.
Fifteen historical short stories, covering eras from Roman to present-day by Judith Arnopp, Anna Belfrage, Derek Birks, Cathie Dunn, Patricia Furstenberg, Jean Gill, Kathy Hollick-Bater, Helen Hollick, Carolyn Hughes, Amy Maroney, Alison Morton, Elizabeth St.John, Marian L Thorpe, Antoine Vanner, Annie Whitehead. With an introduction by Lorna Fergusson.
The lion has long been a symbol of courage, loyalty, and hope. A creature of power and, in some traditions, of the divine. We imagine it unflinching, unafraid. Yet the truest bravery is not found in the open, but within, where the lion lies hidden, waiting to be called upon. In moments of uncertainty or grief. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the decision to face it. It is the moment when we would rather flee, but instead, find a strength we did not know we possessed.
These powerful and often emotional stories follow men, women, and children as they face profound adversity, the resilience to endure, cling to hope for the future, and the courage to change their lives forever.
Join these ordinary people as they uncover extraordinary strength and emerge, in their own way, lion-hearted.
When danger strikes and you are on your own with only fear as a companion
About Alison:
Alison writes the thrillers she always wanted to read – ones featuring tough but compassionate heroines. Her eleven-book Roma Nova thriller series is set in an imaginary European country where a remnant of the ancient Roman Empire has survived into the 21st century and is ruled by women who face conspiracy, revolution and heartache but with a sharp line in dialogue.
All six full-length Roma Nova novels have won the BRAG Medallion, the prestigious award for indie fiction. SUCCESSIO, AURELIA, INSURRECTIO and JULIA PRIMA have been selected as Historical Novel Society’s Editor’s Choices. AURELIA was a finalist in the 2016 HNS Indie Award. The Bookseller selected SUCCESSIO as Editor’s Choice in its inaugural indie review.
Six years’ military service, a fascination with ancient Rome and a life of reading crime, historical and thriller fiction have inspired her writing. She lives in Poitou in France, the home of Mélisende, the heroine of her contemporary thrillers, Double Identity, Double Pursuit and Double Stakes.
Southern Britain, the frontier between the Belgae and the Atrebates. AD 471
When escape means more than just running for your life
About Derek:
Derek writes character-driven, action-packed fiction. His debut historical novel, Feud, is the first of a series of eight books and one novella, entitled The Wars of the Roses. which follows the fortunes of the fictional Elder family. He has also written the Amazon bestselling series, The Last of The Romans, which focuses on the real fifth century Romano-British character of Ambrosius Aurelianus. His first non-fiction book is A Guide to the Wars of the Roses. Under the pen name Tom Hadley, he has also written the Liv Fisher modern thriller series, which begins with Eyes Like Blades.
Derek has written and produced over 40 podcasts on the Wars of the Roses, and now co-hosts the podcast series, A Slice of Medieval, with historian, Sharon Bennett Connolly.
Ésparias, a fictional country bordering the western sea circa AD 900
A mother’s dilemma? To keep them safe – or let them go?
About Marian:
Marian’s novels are historical fiction of an imagined world, one that is close to Britain, Northern Europe, and Rome, but isn't any of them. Her short stories, either in multiple-author anthologies or her own collections range from urban fantasy to historical fiction, slice-of-life to climate fiction.
After two careers as a research scientist and an educator, she decided it was time to do what she'd always wanted, and be a writer. Her first book was published when she was in her mid-50s. Her life-long interest in Roman and post-Roman European history provided the inspiration for her first series, while her other interests in landscape archaeology and birding provide background.
When the Normans come, Southwark’s residents need to fight, flee, hide or die
About Judith:
Multi award-winning author, Judith Arnopp’s novels are set in the late medieval and Tudor period. Her main focus is on the women of the era, her meticulous research offering deep psychological analysis of well-known figures such as Margaret Beaufort, Marguerite of Anjou, Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII himself. She has also written non-fiction How to Dress like a Tudor.
Annie is a prize-winning writer, historian, and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and has written four award-winning novels set in ‘Anglo-Saxon’ Mercia. She has contributed to fiction and nonfiction anthologies and written for various magazines.
She has twice been a prize winner in the Mail on Sunday Novel Writing Competition, and won First Prize in the 2012 New Writer Magazine's Prose and Poetry Competition, a finalist in the Tom Howard Prize for nonfiction and shortlisted for the Exeter Story Prize and Trisha Ashley Award 2021. She was the winner of the inaugural Historical Writers’ Association HWA / Dorothy Dunnett Prize 2017 and subsequently a judge for that same competition.
She has also been a judge for the HNS (Historical Novel Society) Short Story Competition, and was a 2024 judge for the HWA Crown Nonfiction Award and chaired the same panel in 2025.
Her nonfiction books are Mercia: The Rise and Fall of a Kingdom (a #1 Amazon Best-seller, published by Amberley books) and Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England (Pen & Sword Books). In 2023 she contributed to a new history of English monarchs, published by Hodder & Stoughton, and in 2025, Murder in Anglo-Saxon England was published by Amberley Books.
In February 2026 she signed a contract for a new nonfiction book about the Anglo-Saxons, to be published by The History Press in 2027.
Had Anna been allowed to choose, she’d have become a time-traveller. As this was impossible, she became a financial professional with three absorbing interests: history, romance and writing.
Anna has authored the acclaimed time travelling series The Graham Saga, set in 17th century Scotland and Maryland, as well as the equally acclaimed medieval series The King’s Greatest Enemy, which is set in 14th century England, and The Castilian Saga, which is set against the medieval conquest of Wales.
She has also published a time travel romance, The Whirlpools of Time, and its sequel, Times of Turmoil, and is now considering how to wiggle out of setting the next book in that series in Peter the Great’s Russia, as her characters are demanding.
When courage must survive in the face of history’s cruellest plague
About Carolyn:
Carolyn is the author of The Meonbridge Chronicles series, historical fiction set in fourteenth century England. The first Chronicle, Fortune’s Wheel, is set in the immediate aftermath of what we call The Black Death.
Times of social change are always fascinating, and trying to depict the great upheaval in society brought about by the plague was the inspiration for the book. In the subsequent novels, Carolyn has sought to reveal the lives of mostly ordinary medieval folk through stories that tell of experiences especially pertinent to the time but which also resonate today. The stories focus particularly on the lives of women, if only because women in history often have not had much opportunity to “speak”.
There are now eight books in the series. More will follow.
Patricia is a Romanian-born, South Africa-based author of character-driven historical fiction set in medieval Eastern Europe. Her latest novel, When Secrets Bloom, part of the Blood of Kings, Heart of Shadows saga, explores the turbulent world of Vlad the Impaler, weaving meticulous research with moral complexity, faith, and the quiet resilience of women navigating power and peril.
Her short stories, poetry, and travel features have appeared in anthologies and online publications.
When a woman holds a secret, does she keep it, or share it?
About Amy:
Amy lives in Oregon, U.S.A., and spent many years as a writer and editor of nonfiction before turning her hand to historical fiction. Amy is the author of the Miramonde Series, a trilogy about a Renaissance-era female artist and the modern-day scholar on her trail; and the Sea and Stone Chronicles, which features strong, talented women seeking their fortunes in the medieval Mediterranean.
To receive a free prequel novella to the Miramonde Series, join Amy Maroney’s community of readers on her website: https://www.amymaroney.com/
Award-winning Welsh author and photographer Jean Gill lives in Provence with the best scent-hound in the world, a Nikon D750 and a man. Best known for writing epic medieval adventures in The Troubadours and The Midwinter Dragon series, Jean has published twenty-seven multi-genre books since 1988, including the dog bestseller, Someone To Look Up To.
For many years, she taught English, and was the first woman to be a secondary headteacher in the Welsh county of Dyfed. She is mother or stepmother to five children so life is hectic. With Scottish parents, Welsh and French residence and an English birthplace, she can usually shout for the winning team in sporting events.
When the only sound is the song of the sea, do you listen? Or do you drown in the embrace of a mermaid?
About Helen:
Originally first published in 1993, and now known for her captivating storytelling and attention to historical detail, Helen’s historical fiction, nautical adventures, cosy mysteries and short stories, invite readers to step into worlds where the boundaries between fiction and history blend together. Her historical novels span a variety of periods, with a particular focus on the Early Medieval.
Her Pendragon's Banner series offers a vivid portrayal of the King Arthur story set against a plausible reality setting, while the events that led to the 1066 Battle of Hastings shows her ability to bring historical figures and settings to life. Her novel about Queen Emma (The Forever Queen – USA title) became a USA Today best-seller.
In the Sea Witch Voyages, she subtly weaves in elements of supernatural fantasy against the Golden Age of Piracy, creating an immersive and addictive nautical adventure experience.
Her Jan Christopher cosy mystery series is set during the 1970s, based around her, sometimes hilarious, years of working as a North London library assistant.
Her 2025 release of Ghost Encounters, co-produced with her adult daughter, Kathy, reveals some benign ghosts of North Devon where the family moved to in 2013.
Helen has written several short stories, further exploring the echoes of the past, all with her compelling and convincing signature style.
Elizabeth’s critically acclaimed historical fiction brings to life the stories of her ancestors—extraordinary women whose close connections to England’s kings and queens offer an intimate perspective on Medieval, Tudor, and Stuart times. Inspired by family archives and historic residences from Lydiard Park to the Tower of London, she explores ancestral portraits, diaries, and lost gardens—and occasionally encounters a ghost. Discovering a whole different family history in The Gate, Elizabeth expands her storytelling into the early 20th century, adding a new era to her repertoire.
Living between California, England, and the past, Elizabeth is International Ambassador for The Friends of Lydiard Park and curator of The Lydiard Archives, where she is always searching for inspiration for her next novel. Her works include The Lydiard Chronicles, set during the English Civil War, and The Godmother’s Secret, exploring the mystery of the princes in the Tower. In The King’s Intelligencer, set in the court of Charles II, a young woman must decide what she is willing to risk to reveal the whereabouts of the missing princes.
Can the mystery of a secluded island, and a murder, be solved before time runs out?
About Cathie:
Cathie is an award-winning, Amazon-bestselling author of historical fiction, mystery, dual-timeline, and romance set in Scotland, England, and France.
Her latest release, Ascent – the story of Poppa of Bayeux, handfasted wife of Rollo the Viking – is her sixth novel, and she is currently working on the sequel, Treachery. In her House of Normandy series, Cathie seeks to showcase the forgotten women behind the famous warriors who forged early medieval Normandy.
Cathie lives in the south of France with her husband and two rescue pets, enjoying the Mediterranean sunshine and visiting the many historic sites whenever she can.
Groenhorst, outskirts of Amersvoort, The Netherlands
November 11th, 1954
Courage meant survival for many – but others relied on greed
About Antoine:
Antoine spent four decades in international business, latterly at senior executive level, and lectured in academia afterwards. He lived through military coups, a guerrilla war, negotiations with governments, storms at sea and life in mangrove swamps, tropical forest, offshore oil-platforms, and the boardroom. He has lived and worked long-term in eight countries, has travelled widely in all continents except Antarctica and is fluent in three languages.
He has a passion for nineteenth-century political and military history and has a deep understanding of what was the cutting-edge technology of the time. His knowledge of human nature and his first-hand experience of the locales – often surprising – of the most important conflicts of the period provide the impetus for his chronicling of the lives of Royal Navy officer Nicholas Dawlish and his magnificent wife, Florence. There are thirteen volumes so far in the Dawlish Chronicles series, the actions set in the period 1858 to 1915.
Vanner now lives in Britain with his wife, Eva Lagassé (a journalist by background), their dog and five horses.
Kathy is severely dyslexic and struggles with her reading and writing. Her passion is horses and mental well-being. She started riding at the age of three, had her own pony at thirteen, and discovered showjumping soon after. Kathy is now a Devon farmer’s wife, runs Taw River Equine Events, and coaches riders of any age or experience, specialising in positive mindset and overcoming confidence issues via her Centre10 accreditation and Emotional Freedom Technique training. EFT, or ‘tapping’, uses the body’s pressure points to aid calm relaxation and to promote gentle healing around emotional, mental or physical issues. She hopes to extend her training in order to help ex-servicemen overcome PTSD.
Kathy regularly competes at British Showjumping, and rides side-saddle (‘aside’) when she has the opportunity. She produces her own horses, several from home-bred foals. She also has the ability to see, hear and talk to friendly ghosts, several of whom share our 1769 farmhouse.
Lorna Fergusson is an award-winning short story writer and novelist. Founder of Fictionfire Literary Consultancy, she is an experienced editor, writing coach and speaker. She has taught on various Oxford University writing programmes since 2002.
Her stories have won an Ian St James Award, the Historical Novel Society’s Short Story Award, and been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, Pan Macmillan’s Write Now prize and the Historical Novel Society’s First Chapters prize. She was twice runner-up for the Mogford Prize.
Author of The Chase and An Oxford Vengeance, her latest book is a collection of stories set in France, One Morning in Provence. She is currently developing one of the Mogford stories as a novel, as well as working on poetry and a book on mindset for writers.
Born in Scotland, she is married with two sons and lives in Oxford, England.
