United States – September 16, 2026 – Lying in a Tomb, the memoir by physician, author, artist, and anthropological researcher Dr. Jeannette Potts, has received the Literary Titan Book Award, recognizing the book’s distinctive blend of memoir, historical inquiry, scientific curiosity, and ethical reflection.

The book traces Potts’s decades-long relationship with the naturally mummified remains of Guanajuato, Mexico. Her fascination began in 1979, when, at seventeen, she visited a makeshift museum containing bodies that had been removed from local graves after families could no longer pay cemetery burial fees. Some of the remains had been naturally preserved and were subsequently placed on public display without the consent of their relatives.

Among the figures Potts encountered were “La Bruja,” an herbalist and healer whose remains were confined behind iron bars, “San Martincito,” an infant displayed with a rosary across his body, and a six-month-old fetus exhibited beside its mother. The collection would also become internationally recognizable through film, including Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu, which opened with images of the Guanajuato mummies.

In 1983, Potts returned to Mexico after receiving a Fulbright scholarship with an IT & T Fellowship for postgraduate study abroad. There, she conducted anthropological research on the remains. Granted extraordinary access, she spent nights among the mummies studying, sketching, and attempting to understand the conditions that had preserved them.

What began as scientific investigation gradually became a deeply personal story. Potts’s memoir recounts not only her research but also her experience as a young woman navigating gender, class, power, alcoholism, violence, and a relationship with an older businessman that evolved from a romantic fairytale into what she describes as a gilded prison. She ultimately returned to Ohio, rebuilt her life, attended medical school, became a mother and physician, and developed an international career in medicine and education.

Four decades later, Potts returned to Guanajuato in 2024 and 2025, this time bringing a different question to the mummies. Rather than asking only how the bodies had been naturally preserved, she began asking who has the right to display, rename, photograph, transport, and profit from human remains. That ethical evolution became central to Lying in a Tomb.

In its review, Literary Titan highlighted Potts’s ability to combine scientific observation with emotionally candid storytelling. The review notes that the book’s lasting power comes from the parallels it draws between “the exposed bodies in the museum, the young scholar placed on display by powerful men, and the older author choosing to reveal her own history.”

The book incorporates photographs, journal excerpts, historical research, and chapter soundtracks, reflecting Potts’s background as both a scientist and visual artist. These elements deepen a narrative that examines not only mortality, but also ownership, silence, consent, memory, and the responsibility of telling another person’s story.

For Potts, the memoir is also an act of reckoning. She has described her hope that the families connected to the Guanajuato mummies may regard her as a compassionate witness and that the book may encourage greater respect, accurate identification, memorialization, and dignity for the dead.

Readers can discover the Literary Titan Book Award-winning Lying in a Tomb and experience Dr. Jeannette Potts’s extraordinary journey through science, history, danger, survival, and ethical awakening. The book is available for purchase through Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

About the Author

Dr. Jeannette Potts is a physician, author, lecturer, artist, and anthropological researcher. She is the co-founder of Vista Urology in California’s Central Coast region, where she specializes in men’s urological health, and is the principal of Dr. Tango, LLC, an enterprise focused on communication through the metaphor of Argentine Tango.

A graduate of Lake Erie College and Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, Potts received a Fulbright scholarship with an IT & T Fellowship for postgraduate study abroad, which enabled her to conduct anthropological research in Mexico. She later completed specialized fellowship training at the Cleveland Clinic, where she served on staff at the Glickman Urological Institute for 15 years and received the Bruce Hubbard Stewart Fellowship for compassionate and humanistic patient care.

Potts has delivered more than 200 lectures in over 20 countries and has served in international medical leadership roles, including on the board of the Confederación Americana de Urología. She is an honorary member of the Sociedad Mexicana de Urología.

She is also the editor of four textbooks on urology and men’s health and the author of Tango: Lessons for Life. As her medical practice winds down, Potts has returned to her lifelong interests in sculpture, painting, dance, and writing, drawing inspiration from the human body, her Mexican American heritage, and the enduring questions at the heart of Lying in a Tomb.

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