This is the first book I've read entirely in a digital format. Can't say it's changed my life and that I'll start using the "Fire" device a friend recently gave me except perhaps when I'm travelling as is the case currently.
This is the second of three volumes of accounts given by native Americans to the author, a retired college professor and "Indian" (the term she prefers) herself. The first volume treated of stories she obtained mainly at domestic reservations. The third, I'm told, will treat of stories told by urban dwellers. This, the second, concerns itself with Mesoamericans, Maya from Mexico, Belize, Honduras and Guatemala. All accounts are prefaced by the author and are followed by a brief reflection. Most of the material appears to have been transcribed from tape recordings.
Having been to Quintana Roo (NE Yucatan) several times myself, the descriptions of Cancun, Tulum and Coba held particular interest for me as did the author's backgrounding of her encounters with the storytellers, the Maya and their history having been an object of study for me since the eighties. However, given my relative unfamiliarity with Mesoamerican Indians as compared to native Americans in the context of the USA, I enjoyed the first volume of the trilogy more than this one, there being more points of cultural contact.
Generally speaking, the author merely gives verbatim accounts without making judgments herself. Indeed, judgment would be difficult. The accounts of aliens differ so very much (they come from the sea, from the sky, from the earth; they're human, they're humanoid, they're very tall, they're very short etc.) that one would have to presume many, many species of nonhuman intelligences. Instead, the author does make one judgment of sorts and this at the conclusion of the book and in explicit contradiction to the "ancient astronaut" hypothesis. And this, in keeping with the beliefs of some of the Maya, is that the Maya themselves are extraterrestrial in their origins--while allowing that there appear to be other extraterrestrial species as well.