Author To Speak on Maya History and Novel-Writing March 13, 2016
Author Raymona Marie Anderson is Fayetteville Public Library’s Second Sunday speaker for March. The free event begins at 2 p.m., March 13, in the Walker Room at the library, 401 W. Mountain Street.
Anderson’s presentation on her new novel, Two Hearts in Time includes photos she took at Maya sites in Yucatán. Her talk reveals how research narrowed her focus to the ancient writing system and added themes of social injustice and racial prejudice to the narrowly focused romance novel she originally planned.
The time travel historical begins in a ruined pyramid in 2012 and takes the reader through jungle adventures into the haciendas and mansions of Yucatán’s nineteenth-century landed elite. The heroine, Sonrisa Lyons is an American grad student doing research among the ruins.
Rescued from a collapsed pyramid by tomb-looter Don Juan Miguel Zamora, Sonrisa struggles between her contempt for his thievery and her need for his help in returning to civilization.
The don, haunted by the loss of his wife and son, would like to abandon the troublesome trouser-wearing woman from the future, but his cultured upbringing and compassionate heart rule. Forced companionship on the trail through Yucatan’s steamy jungle blazes into mutual passion, and, in spite of herself, Sonrisa is drawn into Miguel’s true life mission.
Her involvement in his underground railway for Maya plantation workers fleeing near slavery in the henequen industry forces a difficult decision. When a
possible way to return to her time arises, will she try to reopen the time portal? Or will she stand beside Miguel in his life-or-death confrontation with a man whose cruelties number among the worst on hacienda lands?
Anderson credits the multi-layered plot on her early writing career in journalism. An Oklahoma native transplanted to NW Arkansas, she turned to fiction after a long career of writing news and features for numerous national and regional publications.
A book signing will follow the presentation, and copies of Two Hearts in Time will be available for purchase.
Phil Slattery
Phil Slattery writes fiction and publishes thechambermagazine.com and ruralfictionmagazine.wordpress.com.