House of the Waterlily ─ A Novel of the Ancient Maya World

Set in the Maya civilization's Late Classic Period House of the Waterlily is a historical novel centered on Lady Winik, a young Maya royal. Through tribulations that mirror the political calamities of the Late Classic world, Winik's personal story immerses the reader not only in her daily life, but also in the difficult decisions Maya men and women must have faced as they tried to navigate a rapidly changing world. Kelli Carmean's novel brings to life a people and an era remote from our own, yet recognizably human all the same.

Kelli Carmean holds a doctorate in Anthropology from the University of Pittsburgh and teaches at Eastern Kentucky University. She wrote her dissertation on the household architecture in the residential area of Sayil, a major Maya site in the Yucatan Peninsula. Her first work of archaeological fiction was Creekside: An Archaeological Novel, which alternates between the present and life on the early Kentucky frontier.