Descend- First Steps

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In September 2020, as COVID-19 swept across the country, Jesmyn Ward wrote an essay for Vanity Fair entitled, “On Witness and Respair: A Personal Tragedy Followed by Pandemic” after the death of her 33-year-old husband just months before the murder of George Floyd. The essay gutted me; I have rarely read anything so powerful. Within the essay, she writes this: “Even in a pandemic, even in grief, I found myself commanded to amplify the voices of the dead that sing to me, from their boat to my boat, on the sea of time.”

They are not masterpieces as I mentioned above, but their writing was something like writing exercises, a writing with which in the medical thriller A Case of Need (that he wrote in 1968 under another pseudonym (Jeffery Hudson)) gained the Edgar Award in 1969. Annis is strong, though, and draws strength from her mother and stories of her grandmother. They are warriors, whose hands are weapons. And they support and love each other, finding ways to help and show gentleness even in the the worst situations. Annis never gives up, determined to find her freedom.Young Annis is a teenager who learned survival skills from her mother, skills to help her in this blind world of unspeakable crimes against humanity—but it was all legal then. Annis possessed some sense of agency only in these monthly sessions with her mama, in the Carolina woods where they had a large outdoor space. “The first weapon I ever held was my mother’s hand.” That is the opening line of the novel. This book gave me so many mixed emotions. It is beautifully written with lyrical prose that pulls you into the heart of the book and the body of Annis as she makes her way through life.

Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. In November 2008, unfortunately, Crichton passed away, so in 2013 the remaining 6 books were released.Annis has hidden strengths and the eye of Aza, the goddess is always upon her. Annis resolves to make her own way in life and not to be beholden to any one. Novels: Shenzi, Banzai, and Ed • Hercules • Megara • Claude Frollo • Mother Gothel • Anastasia Tremaine • Madam Mim • Shere Khan • Ratigan • Yen Sid • Clayton • Lucifer • Iago • Diablo • Jasper and Horace • Flotsam and Jetsam • LeFou • Aziz • Grumpy • Pongo • Perdita • Arthur Pendragon • Mary

For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. The writing is raw and visceral, with not a word wasted. The sentences are short, but the imagery and language made me feel like I was there. Bees provide guides and respite, and references to Dante's Inferno draws us all deeper down. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here.Descendants Novels: The Isle of the Lost • Return to the Isle of the Lost • Rise of the Isle of the Lost • Escape from the Isle of the Lost Let Us Descend is an atmospheric, moving tale that sweeps you away to North Carolina during the mid-1800s and into the life of Annis, a young woman of mixed race trained by her mother in more than just servitude who, after being sold one year after her beloved Mama, is forced in chains on a gruelling march from the rice fields she’s only ever known to the sugar plantations of New Orleans where with a little help from the spirit world beyond she endures extreme hardships and brutal savagery until she can find an opportunity to finally slip free. But Annis finds a new love in Safi, another slave girl. The answer to the master's wrath upon the discovery is to sell Annis and Safi which is where the real story begins. Annis is marched away by the same Georgia Man who took her mother. The march is long and deadly and at the end is another plantation and more misery. Through Annis we see what price is paid when a slave is sold South. With men chained together and women roped together, these people who are property are herded hundreds of miles from the Carolinas to the New Orleans slave markets to learn a new type of servitude on a sugar plantation. During that long, harrowing ordeal, Annis begins to experience the natural world in a new, sometimes frightening, sometimes familiar, way. Here is where the magical realism enters her life and world. For me, this felt like a link in some ways to the magical ending of Sing, Unburied, Sing, although the voices are different here. This worked very well for me as I read. It became a part of Annis’s daily existence, dealing with non-human, natural entities as well as the people around her.