The Lost Sisterhood

Finished July 27
The Lost Sisterhood by Anne Fortier

This novel alternates between two time periods. The earliest one is around 1250 B.C., in the Late Bronze Age, where the story begins with a young woman Myrina and her younger sister Lilli. The two girls return from a successful hunting trip to find their village changed forever. They must find a new home, and Myrina relies on stories from her mother Talla to lead them back to the Temple of the Moon Goddess where she hopes they will be taken in. It is a long trip with many challenges, not least is the reception at the Temple itself. But this is just the beginning of a longer journey, one measured in years, and taking the two woman and their companions across the Mediterranean to new lives.
In the present day, Diana Morgan is a sessional instructor at Oxford, a philologist and an expert in Greek mythology. When Diana was a young child, her father's mother, her Granny, came to live with them, and she became the recipient of Granny's stories. Despite being told that her Granny had mental health issues, Diana believed in the stories of the Amazons that Granny told, and of Granny's life as Kara, one of them. When a man she's never met before, Ludwig, approaches her to assist at a dig, she is surprised and wary. Despite the warnings of her mentor Katherine Kent, and her colleague James Moselane, Diana meets Ludwig at the airport and finds herself at a dig in the middle of the Tunisian desert. What she finds there makes this a personal quest for her.
Instead of going home, she goes on to Knossos to meet her best friend Bex who is on a dig there and has found something she thinks Diana will be interested in, and Diana finds herself running toward the answers to her questions about her grandmother, away from her professorial duties, and staying a step ahead of at least one group of people determined to stop at nothing to keep her from finding answers. Her journey takes her from England to Tunisia, Greece, Turkey, Germany, and Finland.
This is a story of the origins of the Amazons, one that is very believable. This is also a story of women across the ages fighting for the right to live their own lives, on their own terms.
It brings Greek mythology and classic tales alive from Mycenae, Thracia, Ephesos, Troy, and Crete. We see the characters Otrera, Hippolyta, and Paris brought to life.
A engaging quest of a novel.