How was writing this book different from your other books?

(JMP): Four of my previous books are medical textbooks. I was both the editor and contributor. A fifth book is a metaphorical piece which describes the life lessons I derived from tango classes. While many of the examples are personal, these do not come close to the intimate and controversial nature of Lying in a Tomb, which is both a memoir and an observational anthropological study pertaining to human remains. During the writing process, there was a constant unease regarding the vulnerability of my subjects, the mummies of Guanajuato, and the naivete of my younger self.

How did you finally make the book happen? 

(JMP): I was about to initiate another writing project-a biography about a female physician who was an art editor for a medical journal. As I prepared, I found my old notebooks and was, yet again, overcome with the guilt of having never completed a report about my research. I recalled a creative writing class-an elective during medical school-and how my professor had encouraged me to continue writing about the mummies as a collection of short stories. So many decades later, something finally clicked. I composed an outline, organized items from my journals, and reserved a vacation rental for the following year, in Guanajuato. I invited friends who were artists or writers to join me. But first, I scheduled monthly zoom meetings to keep each of us-mostly me-on task. We all had to work consistently on our respective projects, so that our retreat in Guanajuato would be a culmination of our efforts, a reward, and a time of assemblage. I credit our synergy and our sense of accountability for the momentum necessary to bring such things to fruition.

What do you mean when you describe the process as “40 years and 26 months later”?

(JMP): It was during the late 1970’s-early 80’s, when my research of the mummies began. I was 21 years old when I received an award to continue my study. Forty years had passed when I decided to focus on a book about this experience. It took 26 months to review my notebooks, revisit my old haunts in Guanajuato, rekindle distant memory and edit, edit, edit.

How have your feelings about the mummies evolved over this time?

(JMP): In the beginning, I approached the mummies clinically. There was care and respect, but also a professional detachment. Navigating through the inevitable challenges presented in adulthood, transformed my relationship to the mummies, into one of greater empathy and advocacy. I can more deeply identify with their stories, even if I only know their age or cause of death.

If money and politics weren’t an issue, how do you wish you could continue to study the mummies?

(JMP): Oh! I’d pursue my original [naïve] plan. Collect all the death certificates of those bodies currently sepulchered in the crypts (not the graves); create a grid that would map the location relative to the death certificate; de-identify the data from the death certificate, but maintain the crypt location, temporarily; open each crypt- methodically, respectfully, and only in the presence of very few discreet individuals with previous security clearance; document the conditions of each (mummified completely, partially or not all); seal each crypt.

The location of mummies on the map would be analyzed for weather and climate exposure. A truer incidence of mummification would be proven, ie, a numerator (the number of mummified bodies) over the denominator (total number of crypts currently occupied). Mummified vs un-mummified would be statistically analyzed with variables obtained from the death certificate and location. We would see if in fact there are any correlations between such things as cause of death, time of entombment or location and the natural mummification process. The de-identified cemetery map-death certificate key would then be destroyed.

Also, what would you like to see happen with the museum of the mummies? 

(JMP): Paloma Robles Lacayo was the museum director between 2015 and 2018. She made several modifications to enhance both the dignity of the mummified humans and the educational experience. I hope that she can continue to bring about positive changes as a local politician. I wish that the so-called traveling mummies who are now displayed in a neighboring town, could be returned to the original museum at the Cemetery of Santa Paula, in Guanajuato. This will require expansion, which I realize, may no longer be feasible. You might wonder, how is it that all of the mummies were exhibited in this limited space. Well, they were propped-standing- against the walls, and later in tall wooden hutches. Out of respect and conservation efforts, they are exhibited horizontally on their backs, as if lying in a tomb.

As an artist and physician, Jeannette M. Potts, MD is the editor of four urological textbooks published by Humana and Springer Press, as well as author of the book Tango: Lessons for Life, published by Cleveland Clinic Press. She has been a passionate collaborator with the National Institutes of Health and the International Prostatitis Collaborative Network to advance research and patient care.

Shirin Yim Leos’s upcoming novel OF WIND AND DUST—A sweeping, multigenerational novel about three women married to the same man at the same time, stretching from rural China to an emerging, mid-nineteenth century Seattle. An unforgettable story of striving, sacrifice, love, and loyalty inspired by the author’s own family history.

What brought you to write OF WIND AND DUST?

(SYL): I remember being told as a child, just at that age when Snow White and Cinderella were my bedtime companions, that my great-great-great grandmother was a Native American princess. All the adults seemed united in this belief, but also frustratingly ignorant and uninterested in who this princess was, and how she came to be part of our Chinese family. That began a lifelong fascination that eventually led to this novel, although this novel is now far from solely focused on her.

Which parts of this story are grounded in fact, which fictionalized?

(SYL): My search for my Native American great-great-great grandmother eventually led to some astounding facts about her life. She was from the Puget Sound, either Duwamish or Suquamish. I believe the former although there is some conflicting evidence. Her name was Mary Carey. She met and married my great-great-great grandfather, Chun Chin Hock, who is extremely well documented as the first Chinese settler in Washington Territory, and who went on to build shops and hotels, level roads and cut waterways. He was friends with the Seattle pioneers and personalities Yesler and Burke, and played a significant role in building Seattle.

My great-great-great grandparents bought land in Port Orchard and raised a family there. At some point, Chun Chin Hock’s first wife, a Madam Woo, arrived from China. This is part of family lore, but her arrival was also noted in the local newspaper. This wife took Mary’s sons back to China. Mary and Chun only left Seattle for China two years later. All of this is documented. After that, all we have about Mary is a note in the family almanac that she soon died and was buried in one half of a spectacle grave (a Chinese gravesite built for two), outside the east gate of the village.

So, all these turning points in the narrative are grounded in fact, with some slight alterations. For example, I reduced the size of Mary’s family to a single son for focus. The details of time and place that form the background of the novel—China in turmoil, an emerging Seattle, Hong Kong rising out of the malarial marsh—are also grounded in fact, although in some cases I have delayed or brought forward events by a year or two.

Most importantly, the heart of the book, the relationships between these characters, how they thought, felt, and interacted, are entirely fictional as we have nothing in their own voice, no journals or letters. In short, the setting and some plot points are grounded in fact, and the characters and the emotional lives they live are fictionalized.

What was the most surprising finding in your research?

(SYL): There was a belief held by some that Mary was one of Chief Seattle’s daughters. Research at the Suquamish Museum could not confirm but also could not rule out that she was one of three daughters by Seattle’s second wife who have disappeared into history. There’s conflicting evidence that she might have been the daughter of Chief Curley, also known as Chief Suquardle, a leader of the Duwamish and half-brother to Chief Seattle.

What surprised me most in my research was that Mary’s origin was so difficult to establish. I would have thought daughters of people as famous as Chief Seattle and Chief Curley would have been mentioned by name and in writing, at some place and some time. Mostly, they were not.

I also found in my own family’s almanac that all the births and names of sons were recorded, when they married, when they died. Sometimes but not always daughters were noted as having been born, but names were not given. Marriage and death were never recorded. For the first time I was acutely aware of how easily stories and people are lost, especially the stories of women.

What did you learn about yourself as a writer during the long writing process?

(SYL): When I began this book over a decade ago, I thought of myself as a short-form writer. I wrote picture books, twenty of which have been published, and I wrote short stories. I did not think I had it in me to complete a novel.

What I learned was that I can do it! That in fact, I find having more time to tell the story liberating. I only hope that I can do it a bit more quickly next time.

What did you learn about your family that you didn’t already know?

(SYL): I learned that we have distant roots in the Puget Sound. It sounds sentimental, but I now feel a deeper connection to the sea and sky there. I think that comes through in the book.

I am also convinced that we are all connected to remarkable people: if you unspool any family history, you will find fascinating and admirable individuals. And these individuals may look nothing like you. They might not think like you do. They certainly won’t share your cultural context. In our current tribalism we tend to forget that history is long, and if we go back far enough, we were all each other’s people.

Are you planning to write another novel?

(SYL): Yes. This novel began as Mary’s story, and then other characters came alive and it is now the story of three women, all married to the same man at the same time. In its writing, other characters beyond these three women came alive also, and now they are demanding that their stories be told. So, I am working on something that is not exactly a sequel, but that takes OF WIND AND DUST as its jumping off point.

Shirin Yim Leos is an Ezra Jack Keats Award–winning author of 21 children’s books, a writing retreat leader, and a former publisher. She has taught writing at conferences around the world and at institutions such as Stanford University’s Continuing Studies program for more than a dozen years. Publishers Weekly once named her a talent to watch; two feature articles and several years later, they placed her on their front cover. Last year, they applauded the sale of her adult historical fiction, OF WIND AND DUST, to The Dial Press as their Deal of the Week. The launch of the book is scheduled for early 2027. In the meantime, Shirin likes to help writers with her perspective from both sides of the desk.