Synopsis 

At sixty, Vonnie Ivers receives an inner warning: if she continues along this path, she will die. Not a physical death, but a summons to relinquish the life that can no longer carry her forward.

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On January 6, 2021, she travels alone from Kansas to a healing center deep in the Yucatán jungle. She arrives as a community organizer, mother, musician, and survivor. She intends to understand her progressive hearing loss and become a clearer conduit for what wants to move through her.

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Across ten days and six ceremonies, the structures Vonnie relies upon begin to fracture. The darkness cannot be conquered. Fear takes form. Resistance tightens. A wolf and a jaguar stand guard over the places she keeps locked away. Amid terror and disorientation come unexpected teachers: an unassuming jungle plant, a mysterious inner hum, the wings of song, and the living presence of the jungle itself.

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Slowly, Vonnie finds a new way into the unknown. She experiences the power of an ask rather than a demand, negotiation with the Divine rather than force, and trust that does not require her to relinquish sovereignty. What begins as a descent into darkness becomes a direct encounter with ordering, expansion, and the possibility of flight.

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Decades later, at the age of 120, Vonnie tells the story to her adult great-granddaughters, who ask to hear about pivotal moments in their GG’s life. Her account becomes both remembrance and inheritance—an intimate testimony to the ways trauma can be transformed without being erased, and to the freedom that emerges when we meet mystery in relationship.

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Lyrical, candid, and threaded with humor, Dragonfly: Ten Days in the Unknown invites readers into a journey that is personal yet widely resonant—a journey toward deeper listening, reclaimed trust, and the courage to grow wings without knowing where they will carry her.