Jaguar on the Mountain: A Story of Gertrude Duby Blom and the Last of the Lacandona Maya by W Lee Slaight
W. Lee Slaight draws on a connection to Gertrude Duby Blom for a story spanning 1975, 1990 and 2025.
NEW YORK CITY, NY, UNITED STATES, October 26, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — The survival of a rainforest and the culture sustained within it are inseparable questions in W. Lee Slaight’s Jaguar on the Mountain: A Story of Gertrude Duby Blom and the Last of the Lacandona Maya. Set in Mexico, the book brings historical fiction and jungle adventure to an inquiry into why civilizations flourish and disappear, and what their experiences can reveal about threats facing all of us—timely issues.
In 1975, former World War II resistance fighter and environmentalist Gertrude Duby Blom is working to protect the Lacandona Maya while drawing attention to the burning jungle. Her friend Chief Chan K’in Viejo warns that the loss of the last mighty trees will bring the world to an end. Moving through 1990 and 2025, the story places their concerns against decades of exploitation, colonization, forest destruction and cultural erasure.
The rainforest is more than the site of an expedition. It is the land whose preservation the Lacandona Maya teach their children, alongside creation stories and knowledge of medicinal cures. By placing those living traditions beside questions about ancestral civilizations, the book connects environmental damage, modernization, and the loss of long-standing practices of crop and forest management with the loss of knowledge passed between generations.
The story explores extinction and its causes: power conflicts, settler violence, invasion and empire-building. The Spanish Conquest lasted three centuries before the last Maya kingdoms were finally destroyed, leaving behind ruins, monuments, remains of pyramids and the spoils of warfare. Globally, these conflicts continue, and Slaight suggests there are lessons to be learned from the past.
For readers interested in archaeology but unfamiliar with scholarly treatises or specialist writing, Slaight brings the great Maya sites, experts’ discoveries and their interpretations of conflicts and outcomes to light through accessible narrative. The book’s scope includes cosmology and the records of historical and prehistoric upheaval preserved in Maya codices. That emphasis gives students, book clubs and general readers a way into subjects extending beyond the Maya calendar to a broader intellectual and cultural inheritance.
The sequel, due out in 2027 and titled The Missing Masterworks of the Maya — A Story of the Stolen Codices, follows Lacandona children who return to Chiapas to reconnect with their roots, search for an old map and possibly find other codices lost in ruins. Again, this is historical fiction with truth and facts calculated to hold your interest.
Both books will be on display and made part of the AWP Writers Conference held in Chicago, IL, March 17–20, 2027. Find Slaight there with authors KM Cookie, Cheryl Noralez-Figueroa and Mesha McGregor: “Caribbean and Maya Stories Come Alive”—an exciting event! Zoom sessions are planned in advance for those interested in a trip to Na Bolom. See https://wleeslaight.com for announcements.
Reviewers have found this a compelling story: Through the life and work of Gertrude ‘Trudi’ Duby Blom, the book becomes at once a meditation on preservation, a work of historical recovery and a passionate defense of Indigenous humanity. Deeply personal for the author who knew and rode with Trudi on expedition, this book is meant to resonate with her readers as a challenge and lesson. The jungles of Chiapas breathe with new life.
W. Lee Slaight is the pen name of a former trial attorney. The author knew the great Trudi Blom decades ago. Now, the author writes historical fiction and adventure in various forms, evolving from her life experience. Her lawyer mysteries include City to Fear and The Failed Judiciary, along with The Unknown Raphael — A Mystery from the 19th Century to Present Times.
Learn more at https://wleeslaight.com, https://booksbywendie.com, or https://wendieelovich.com.
You can also email elovichlaw@gmail.com. Slaight welcomes invitations to speak at book clubs and libraries and appear on podcasts. She is delighted to offer her stories.
Available now.
Get your copy here:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H5FXRQJ8
For review copies, interview requests, or additional information, please contact:
W. Lee Slaight
BrightKey PR
elovichlaw@gmail.com
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