THE GODMA’S DAUGHTERS received a 4+ star review, making it an IndieReader Approved title.
Following find an interview with author Isabella Ides.
What is the name of the book and when was it published?
THE GODMA’S DAUGHTERS: A Love Story, A Time Travel, A Vision Quest; March 15, 2021
What’s the book’s first line?
“Tell it again, Grandmother — the one about the Maya Godma — but please stop changing the story.”
What’s the book about?
The Godma’s Daughters is a love story, a time traveler’s journey, a tale of border crossings. By turns visionary, dangerous, enchanting. With unforgettable characters to love, including a charming burro named Pants-on-Fire and two pairs of young lovers whose stories reach deep into the Maya past.
The cousins, Mocheela and Liliana, discover that their accidental meeting of Junio and Zack on a Trescabras playground was no accident. Raised by a grandmother who fills their heads with Maya tales each night, the teenaged girls gradually realize that their love stories are playing out in another, more dangerous world. The magical Maya story contains a shocking secret — one of the four friends is destined for human sacrifice.
Two grandmothers collaborate across time to stage a dramatic rescue. Both are powerful medicine women of the PaperClan. Both serve the Maya Godma, Ixmukáhne. One lives in a contemporary Texas border town, Trescabras. One lives in the ancient Maya city of Yax Tok. She is the first female shaman, the rebel Maya Ixaman. She has dialed up the future, in order to change the past.
Now everything depends on Mocheela and what happens in the deeps of a God-haunted natural pool in the Yucatan. There is more at stake than a PaperClan bloodline and the destinies of the lovers. A power shift among the ancient Maya Gods could signal the return of the Godma and the rewilding of planet Earth.
What inspired you to write the book? A particular person? An event?
I was traveling in the Yucatan and found myself alone at a Cenote — one of thousands of spring-fed pools that riddle the peninsula. The Cenote beckoned. I jumped in and was enjoined by a mystery. The climax scene of my novel takes place in the deeps of one of these a god-haunted pools — Yax Tok Ts’ono’ot. You could say my novel began with the climax. Then I imagined what led up to it and what led away.
Earlier on that trip, a self-proclaimed Maya bus driver joked that his people used to drown virgins in the Cenotes. I began to wonder what it would be like for a nonbeliever to have her daughter chosen for the dubious honor of ritual sacrifice. Then it seemed a grandmother whispered in my ear — tell my granddaughter’s story. I saw a rebel female shaman in mind’s eye. I felt the call and begin to wonder how the present could redeem the past.
What’s the main reason someone should really read this book?
It’s a great story. So you could read it just for the story. But I am a writer in love with big ideas and wisdom traditions. So if you are reader who loves to let your imagination romp in a world of big ideas and who is attracted to unknown unknowns, you should definitely read The Godma’s Daughters.
What’s the most distinctive thing about the main character?
Mocheela A’Chimal is first and foremost a storyteller. She knows how to spellbind a listener and understands that stories change over time, how the are riddled with unreliable memories, and how narratives compete with each other, how they define us and bind us to our ancestors and to the future.
What’s the best and the hardest part of being an indie?
The best part is that I am my own boss. I am free to dance with my personal muse and ignore all the noise of the marketplace. The hardest part is entering the marketplace that I’ve blissfully ignored. Suddenly I’m casting off alone in a tiny rowboat, trying to reach readers an ocean away. I sent up an S.O.S. And happily IndieReader showed up on my radar and promises to be of help with some of the heavy rowing.
Is there something in particular that motivates you (fame? fortune?)
What motivates me is the writing itself. I love being in the writing groove. I am addicted to the particular brain cocktail that lights up my mind when stand at the keyboard, generating prose. I am in love with the act of generation, bringing something into the world that moments before simply did not exist.