Oh, hello there, hola…
My name is Catalina Cerrato of House Ajaw K’iche’, and I do believe I’ve been asked to give you a tour of my home. This is a rather difficult question as I "lived" in the 16th century, and truly I had several homes all over Guatemala. However, you’ll be pleased to know (or at least, I was pleased to discover) that one of my homes is still standing after all these years, and so are the towns in my book, although some have different names by now.
Let’s start with the tiny town of Santa Cruz del Quiché, where my story begins. ‘Tis a mountainous place, green and lush, and scented by forest pines. It used to be called Q’umarkaj, the capital city of the K’iche’ Maya people, my mother’s people. At one point there were several stone palaces and pyramid temples, not quite as sizeable as our most famous ones in Tikal, which are pictured here, but still, rather lovely. Unfortunately, their stones were pilfered by my father’s people and used to build their Catholic church.
Next is Santiago de los Caballeros, now known as Antigua. For hundreds of years it was the capital city of Guatemala, but unfortunately it was destroyed several times by the many volcanoes surrounding it, and people got tired of rebuilding it. Here is a picture of one of the volcanoes smoking ash behind my old palace home! It is truly a gorgeous place, even if it’s mostly a relic of my father’s colonial times. Today, the new capital is called Guatemala City, and I highly recommend a visit to the Popol Vuh museum if you’re ever there, but I digress.
I, too, spent a part of my fictional life near Lake Atitlan, though I have no pictures to show for it, because my dear author went to visit in March 2020, and had to swiftly evacuate before some sort of terrible plague shut down the entire country. ‘Tis a rather riveting story, should you ever want to hear her tell it. It involved riding on her own at full speed for over six hours in some sort of carriage I believe is called a taxi, praying that the border to Mexico was still open by the time she arrived late at night.
However, a few days prior to that event, she did visit the town of Chichicastenango, which is also briefly mentioned in the end of my novel. They have quite a stunning marketplace there. Here is a picture of the flower stalls draping the steps leading up to the church.
Of course, those steps used to be a K’iche’ Maya pyramid temple.
Nowadays, people are free to light copal incense to pray and honor their ancestors. Of course, in my time that would’ve been considered a heretical sacrilege, and they would’ve paid dearly for it, like my mother did.
Thankfully, times have changed, and the K’iche’ Maya people no longer need to hide their wonderful customs, history, and myths.
For a young woman coming of age in sixteenth-century Guatemala, safeguarding her people’s legacy is a dangerous pursuit in a mystical, empowering, and richly imagined historical novel.
Catalina de Cerrato is being raised by her widowed father, Don Alonso, in 1551 Guatemala, scarcely thirty years since the Spanish invasion. A ruling member of the oppressive Spanish hierarchy, Don Alonso holds sway over the newly relegated lower class of Indigenous communities. Fiercely independent, Catalina struggles to honor her father and her late mother, a Maya noblewoman to whom Catalina made a vow that only she can keep: preserve the lost sacred text of the Popol Vuh, the treasured and now forbidden history of the K’iche’ people.
Urged on by her mother’s spirit voice, and possessing the gift of committing the invaluable stories to memory, Catalina embarks on a secret and transcendent quest to rewrite them. Through ancient pyramids, Spanish villas, and caves of masked devils, she finds an ally in the captivating Juan de Rojas, a lord whose rule was compromised by the invasion. But as their love and trust unfold, and Don Alonso’s tyranny escalates, Catalina must confront her conflicted blood heritage—and its secrets—once and for all if she’s to follow her dangerous quest to its historic end.
Women's Fiction Historical [Amazon Crossing, On Sale: August 1, 2024, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9781662517976 / ]
Sofia is a Mexican writer. She spent her childhood and adolescence in Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Singapore. She completed her undergraduate and doctorate degrees in psychology at the University of Queensland, in Australia.
She currently lives in the UK with her husband and son, and splits her time writing, raising her son, and working as a psychologist, supporting people with brain injuries and neurological conditions.
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