The Reddening Path is the story of Paméla's journey home. Adopted as an infant by Hannah & Fern, a Toronto lesbian couple, 21 year old Paméla returns to her native Guatemala to search for her birth mother. Her quest turns into a multi-layered journey and uncovers a tangle of political and romantic intrigue as Paméla, a student of Latin American history, discovers her Mayan heritage and learns about the complexities of life in Guatemala. The history of the Spanish conquest weaves throughout the narrative, coloring the lives of everyone she encounters in her birth land; Guadalupe and María-Teresa, the nuns who help her; Ernesto, the General, and Fabiana, his mistress; Chavela, a weaver, and Antonio, her wounded husband, home after twenty years as refugees. The love affair between Hernando Cortés and his translator, Malinche, parents of the first significant mestizo, Martin Cortés, becomes a poignant counterpoint to the bond between Fabiana and the General, whose army was responsible for the destruction of her village. In going home Paméla discovers the spiritual and emotional complexities facing those of mixed blood as she reaches back to the first imprinting of European culture and Catholicism on the indigenous life of Meso-America. And their daughter's questing forever changes her mothers