When Lucille “Lou” Sondern was 16, she encountered two books on the ancient Maya. The first, a novel, described the adventures of an American teenager who travels to Central America alone and dives into an ancient Mayan well of sacrifice.  The second book, an autobiography by Edward Herbert Thompson, told of the Thompson’s efforts as an archaeologist and U.S. consul to dredge the Sacred Cenote in the ruins of Chichen Itza, proving the Maya had used it for sacrifice.  Sondern was mesmerized.  She didn't know it then, but she had entered the realm of IxChel, the Maya Moon Goddess. Many years later, in 1984, to keep the promise she made as an adolescent, she traveled to Mexico to visit Chichen Itza.

At age 78, in spite of hospitalizations (including one while in the Yucatan on a research trip), Sondern finished and published The Moon Child’s Promise. She studied the ancient Maya for decades and made a number of research trips to the Yucatan peninsula Mayan ruins and contemporary Mayan communities in preparation for writing the novel. “Then I had to forget half of what I had learned in order to write a novel rather than a textbook,” she says with a laugh.

About the book’s completion, Sondern says, “It was very hard to find information about IxChel when I started writing in the early 1990s.  I started first to write a short story, then a novella, and then the novel, writing the prologue and about 14 chapters.  It became too much work, and I abandoned the project and began writing other things.  In 2001, I traveled to Puerto Morelos and was walking in the surf debating whether to spend more time on the ancient Maya.  I was actively praying and asking myself, ‘What should I do?’  I distinctly heard a voice that said. ‘You mentioned my name [IxChel] in the prologue, and I haven't turned up since.  You can't play fast and loose with me.  Mention my name in every chapter, and I'll see to it that you finish the book.’  That was a strong impetus. I did, and she did!”

Sondern has served as an inspiration to other aspiring writers and those who have simply put off their dreams for years. “When they complain they’ll be 50 or 60 by the time they accomplish what they’ve always dreamed of,” she says, “ I tell them they’ll be 50 or 60 with or without their dream. Better with it, I think. Look at me.” Currently working on her memoirs and a short fiction collection, Sondern insists on the importance of following one’s bliss, as she once heard Joseph Campbell advise. “It’s never too late to do what you love, what you’ve always secretly wanted to do,” she adds. Even if it means trekking through ruins in the jungle with ill health and struggling with revisions in a hospital bed, apparently the achievement of a lifelong dream is worth any effort to this redoubtable woman.