The ASCENDANT.

Jesmyn Ward, a double National Book Award winner and bestselling author, has returned to fiction with her haunting and beautiful novel, Let Us Descend. The idea for the novel came to Ward while listening to a radio series on the history and culture of New Orleans, where she was shocked to realize the erasure of the city's role in the American domestic slave trade. Let Us Descend tells the story of Annis, a young enslaved woman who is brutally sold to a sugar plantation in Louisiana. Ward aims to challenge misconceptions about slavery and the passive slave narrative, believing that every enslaved person has a story to tell. The novel explores themes of grief, love, and resilience, and is dedicated to Ward's late brother and husband. Despite her success, Ward remains grounded and continues to write from her small-town Mississippi home, drawing inspiration from the people and experiences around her. [Extracted from the article]