The Storyteller
The storyteller is the voice of the collective. They never tell a straight tale.
In La Kesh is a Mayan greeting that means, “I am a reflection of you, as you are of me.”
Most auspicious is this year of 2012, as the long-predicted end of the Mayan calendar nears. Based on her profound experience with Mayan culture, a beloved healer and teacher from North Carolina, Libby Outlaw, has created a rich fictional tapestry of a young woman who embarks on a quest that links her with a Mayan “sister” who lived in 165 BC.
In La Kesh: A Spiritual Journey of Discovery, the protagonist, Mesa, is a scholar of
archaeoastronomy and a lover of Mayan history, an interest she inherited from her grandmother who was known as a wise and rather mysterious healer. When her grandmother dies, Mesa inherits a collection of sacred objects and a mission to return them to their origins in the Mayan world, a mission that intersects with her “sister” of a long-lost civilization.
At the entreaty of her own grandmother, the “sister” travels across vast lands to find a new home, while caring for her twins and keeping the sacred ritual of her tribe. Set in today’s Mexico and ancient Mayan territory, against a backdrop of violent storms and earthquakes, temples, pyramids and ruins, the two women are guided by their growing intuitive powers to understand the signs and omens of their times. As they each reach the end of the saga, tremendous surprises from the past surface to confirm the truths they have come to know.
Throughout the two dramatic adventures, the author has cleverly embedded within In La Kesh a spiritual construct of nine principles of spiritual guidance. She said, “You can use them to guide your own spiritual journey. Using Mesa’s example, we can make the changes needed to bring the planet into balance with purpose, community, partnership and equality.”
The author has traveled many times to the Yucatan Peninsula and Mexican highlands walking the paths of the ancient Mayans. She has been a somatic body worker, healer and teacher in Chapel Hill, North Carolina for more than three decades, helping clients embody their spiritual journey, using the same voice as is heard in this novel. As an artist, writer and earth tender, she also uses her creative abilities to express the spiritual journey that is her own life.