SHE WHO LOVED A LIE
by Linda Somiari-Stewart
She Who Loved a Lie: An Ijaw folktale of love, loss, and return
Tari-Ere was a proud virgin-beautiful, bold, and unimpressed by the many suitors who sought her hand. But when a mysterious stranger arrived, speaking sweet words and cloaked in charm, her guarded heart gave way.
She had no idea she was marrying a water god in disguise.
Swept into the oceanic realm, Tari-Ere wept as she discovered the truth. Trapped between worlds, stripped of all she knew, she found the strength to endure and by a twist of fate, was returned to her people.
Now wiser and humbled, Tari-Ere listens to the wisdom of her parents and opens her heart anew. This time, she chooses with clarity.
She Who Loved a Lie is a timeless tale from the Niger Delta reminding young hearts that not all that glitters is true love, and that sometimes the path to joy begins with a painful awakening.
More books by Linda Somiari-Stewart
TAMARA
The Gender of God
Long before we saw ourselves here, Tamara ruled the multiverse. But history remembers only what power permits.
This is the Ijaw mythology of the one the world unmade, the name they silenced, the gender they rewrote.
A bold retelling rooted in ancestral memory and mythic resistance, Tamara: The Gender of God reclaims the forgotten feminine at the heart of creation and dares to ask: What if God is She?
The Square of Lost Songs
A Modern Griot Tales
In a world that traded wisdom for wireless, and firelight for false light, the griot returns…
The Square of Lost Songs is a soul-stirring collection of modern folktales that echo with the wisdom of ancient drums and the defiance of
forgotten tongues. From wind-shamed princes and dancing daughters who could not stop, to eagles who dreamed beyond the clouds and
spiders repaying old debts, Linda Somiari-Stewart revives the griot’s sacred calling: to remember, to rebuke, to restore.
Each tale is a fire lit against forgetfulness, a song for the children of the diaspora and dreamers who long for rootedness. Here, ancestral spirits speak not from graves but from the spaces we once abandoned— courtyards, firesides, names, and truths.
If you have ever longed to sit at the feet of elders or wondered what the wind forgot to tell you, this book will bring you home