I grew up in a family that would interrupt a dinner conversation to recite a famous poem. Have you always wanted to be a writer? I have been interested in writing since I was a child. After taking a few years to focus on raising my kids, I decided to expand on this, and interweave real events from the life of my grandmother and other ancestors with the many interesting things that happened in Merida in the early 1900s, just after the Mexican Revolution. My professor liked the story, and this story basically evolved into Chapter 1 of Xtabentum. After I came to the U.S., I was taking some English classes at DePaul University and was asked to write a story in one of those classes. My grandmother was from Merida, Yucatan and she always told me fascinating stories about her life and that part of Mexico.

Why did you want to tell this story?My mother died when I was born, and I was raised by my grandmother she was like my mom. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title. Her search, told in the first person, is blended with a third-person account of the lives of Amanda and her contemporaries in the 1920s.

Parts of the story take place in modern times, where the discovery of an old birth certificate sets Amanda's granddaughter in search of a secret about her father's birth. The story follows Amanda through her horror at the social injustice of the two-class Mexico to the sacrifices she makes in the name of friendship. Against the true historical background of rebellion and assassination in the unstable country, the whipping of Carmen by a Diaz neighbor exposes the sheltered existence of the two women and drives them apart. Amanda's lifelong friend, Carmen, is from the opposite end of the social spectrum, a Mayan Indian who is the daughter of one of the Diaz family servants.

Amanda Diaz is from the 'divine caste,' a small group of families of European descent who dominate the politics and economy of the region. Xtabentum: A Novel of Yucatan is a story of two young women set in the years following the Mexican Revolution in Merida, Yucatan, one of the wealthiest cities in the world at the time. According to Mayan legend, the Xtabentum flower that grows wild on the Yucatan peninsula first appeared on the grave of a free-spirited young woman who was scorned for her passion by the people of her village, but loved by the gods for her kind heart.

Xtabentum by Rosy Hugener