The Fifth Goddess

The Fifth Goddess, Staci Backauskas, Jai Creations, 1999

Rena Sutcliffe is your average young woman living alone and working in the advertising industry in present-day New York City. It's not exactly a good, high-paying job; it's more like a comfortable job for Rena. She spends her nights alone and in front of the TV eating delivered Chinese food. Rena doesn't go out at night because she has a severe weight problem. She joins a self-help group at a local church, and it actually helps for a while. Losing enough weight to need a new wardrobe, Rena is made leader of the group. A run-in with another member, also with a severe weight problem, causes her to leave the group permanently. She and Richard, her steady boyfriend, break up, and she drifts from one illicit relationship to another.

Rena gets up the courage to accept a better paying job at another agency, with increased responsibility. She gets quite an education in the politics of the advertising industry. Her new agency sends her to Las Vegas for six months to get a new branch office off the ground. Slowly, but surely, she moves up the corporate ladder to the point where her income hits six figures. One day, she is offered a chance to live, and work, on a New Jersey horse farm. What does Rena do?

This might seem like a female "Bright Lights, Big City" except that Rena doesn't know that she has four of the most famous goddesses of antiquity living in her head. Erishkigal, the Sumerian Goddess of the Underworld; Inanna, the Sumerian Goddess of Wisdom; Kuan Yin, the Chinese Goddess of Compassion, and Kali, the Hindu Goddess of Destruction talk among themselves, quite irreverently, and control Rena's every move, pushing her in the direction they think is best for her.

This works really well as a novel of contemporary New York City. It also works quite well as a goddess, or spirituality, story.