“Bringing History to Life: Call of the Owl Woman–A Novel of Ancient Nasca”
To better navigate a world where differences abound and yet everything is ultimately connected, we need tools like empathy, understanding, and respect for other beings. As a former teacher who has lived in many countries, and as the mother of bicultural children, I am often struck by how many students are unfamiliar with the world outside their own neighborhoods, let alone outside their country. Those who tend to have greater awareness of the wider world have either lived in other places, or are avid readers. But even as an avid reader myself, I’m the first to admit how little I knew about South America before I met my Peruvian husband. When we moved to his homeland, I discovered things that would change my life.
More than a decade later, after my extended family celebrated a three-generation reunion in South Dakota, my then 13-year-old daughter and I embarked on an epic mother-daughter road trip to Atlanta via the Great Lakes. Along the way, she asked me to write something that she and her friends would want to read—preferably a novel that that would include a little romance, bring to life some history from her native Peru, and would include characters from different cultures trying to get to know each other despite language barriers. I accepted her challenge and we proceeded to outline what the book could look like.
We decided that the heroine should come from the earth-honoring Nasca culture that had thrived on the arid southern coast of Peru for almost a thousand years, long before the Inca empire was established. The Nasca people did not have written language, but we were both fascinated by the vast array of stunning ceramics, textiles and mysterious landscape art, as well as their ingenious water systems and evidence of the largest adobe ceremonial center in the world. We added another character who would arrive as a wounded exile from the Moche culture, much further north and chose to set the story in the sixth century, the period shortly before the Nasca people would completely disappear. We wanted to learn about what happened, and imagine how young people at that time might have faced the prospect of environmental and cultural collapse.
We spent a summer working together at an archaeological site in Lima before she dove back into school while I dove into research. The questions I started with were: 1) What lead to the demise of the Nasca culture? 2) How and why did they create the giant lines and animal shapes that can only be seen from the air? 3) How would an earth-honoring culture interpret the environmental crises that plagued the region? and 4) what lessons can we apply to our current environmental challenges?
Since there is no evidence of written language in ancient Peru, to recreate a plausible setting and story, I started by reading everything I could get my hands on and visiting area museums. I interviewed archaeologists, anthropologists, archaeoastronomers, archaeobotanists, geologists, hydrologists and local historians. I immersed myself in the landscape and climbed the dune-covered mountain sacred to the Nasca, spending a night there under a full moon. I visited thousand-year-old guarango trees and explored hidden valleys. I walked the Nazca lines in my head, etched replicas across wide stretches of beach, and doodled my own. I kept adding more questions.
How did the Nasca manage to harness the underground waters that turned their desert valleys into productive fields? Why were there so many severed heads in their art and in their ritual offerings? What was the meaning behind the orcas (killer whales) and cacti that are so common in their ceramics? Of all the many theories about the Nazca Lines which was closest to the truth of how they were actually used?
The process led me down some unexpected paths. Researching orcas, the ocean’s top predator, opened up a new world of understanding about the intelligence and social aspects of the species and also raised questions about interspecies communication. Investigating the role of the San Pedro cactus in Nasca art linked it to the earlier Chavin culture, but also led me to explore contemporary cultures where healers still use the cactus ceremonially for “visionary medicine” and consider plants to be teachers of wisdom and guides for healing.
The novel project became much more than a novel. The discovery that there were once great forests in the desert valleys led me to make a documentary with Peruvian filmmaker Delia Ackerman to raise awareness about deforestation and the critical role of the guarango tree. Known by some as the Tree of Life, by others as the King of the Desert, or as the One Tree that unites the three worlds—the heavens above, the world below, and the place we inhabit in between—the guarango also provides food, shelter and fuel, as well as drawing water to the surface from deep underground sources. And in the process of learning about contemporary earth-honoring communities in Peru, from the highest mountains to the deepest jungles, I reconnected to my own gratitude for the planet we call home and renewed my commitment to honoring the earth.
The resulting novel became Call of the Owl Woman – A Novel of Ancient Peru, the story of 15-year-old Patya whose journey from healing to heroine includes wrestling with what is expected of her versus what inspires her. Her beloved grandmother, a renowned healer, has just died and a powerful, corrupt priest is undermining her father’s role as the region’s Water-Guardian. After the priest’s secret attempt to sacrifice her little brother to sharks is foiled by an orca and a Moche sailor, Patya dares to challenge his interpretation of “the will of the gods” and becomes a target as well.
Publishing May 13th, 2025
About the Book: In sixth-century Peru, the Nasca people have flourished for centuries, their faith and ingenuity keeping the desert valleys green in a land where water is scarce. But a prolonged drought now fuels dangerous unrest. Cunning sorcerers and brutal priests vie for control, and Water Guardians like Patya’s father, who refuse to favor the powerful, are under attack.
Devastated by her grandmother’s sudden death, fifteen-year-old Patya retreats into dance and music. She does not want to become a healer like the long lineage of women in her family before her. Even her grandmother had hinted she was born for something else. But, in the wake of a deadly earthquake, Patya must not only help the healers, she must do things she never thought possible. As she begins to conquer her self-doubts and trust her own sense of justice, she will also have to outwit men of power to keep her little brother from being sacrificed by religious extremists at the coming solstice.
As Patya begins to realize and grow into her own power, she also discovers her grandmother’s secret legacy and prepares to step into an unexpected destiny.
“This book is so rich! The story is so compelling I couldn’t put it down. I loved the visceral sensation of movement in the words, felt myself floating, swooping, transforming, transmuting as I read them! It also offers a way know the Nasca and the rhythms of ceremony in Andean pre-history, both its gifts and misuses.”—Bonnie Glass-Coffin, Professor of Anthropology, Utah State University, author of The Gift of Life: Female Spirituality and Healing in Northern Peru
About the Author: k.m. huber grew up in the Pacific Northwest climbing trees, wandering in the mountains, wondering about the world, and writing poems. Unforeseen winds carried her to a new life in New York City, chance introduced her to her future husband, and before long another wind blew them together to the stark desert coast of his homeland, Peru. There, she fell under the enchantment of mystical inland Andean peaks, magical valleys, timeless tales and colorful traditions.
While living in Lima, she dove into research about the Nasca, interviewed experts, walked its landscapes, climbed sacred hills, met some thousand-year-old guarango trees, and collaborated on a documentary about deforestation.
Huber’s writing can be found in Vice-Versa, Earth Island Journal, Post Road, Rougarou, The McGuffin, and Latin America Press, among others. Her fiction includes Patya y los Misterios de Nasca (La Nave, Peru 2023). She currently resides in Maryville, Tennessee with her husband and dog, still zooms with her Lima writer’s group, and enjoys being close to mountains again.
Thank you, k.m., for your post about your inspiration!
