Tag: Amazon

Day 109: State of Wonder

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Cover for State of WonderBest Book of the Week!
Ann Patchett is another writer whose works are all different from each other. You never know what to expect, except that they will be compelling, imaginative, and beautifully written.

At the beginning of State of Wonder, Dr. Marina Singh’s coworker has died in the Amazon. Their employer, Vogel Pharmaceuticals, sent him out to determine the status of a project run by the reclusive Dr. Annick Swenson. Swenson has sent a brief message saying that Anders Eckman died of a fever.

Mr. Fox, the company’s CEO and Marina’s lover, asks Marina to go out to Manaus, locate Dr. Swenson’s encampment, and find out what happened to Eckman and what is going on with the drug. Dr. Swenson is working on a drug to help women conceive, based upon the startling late fertility of the women in a tribe of Amazonian Indians, and Vogel has given her an open check book. But she has written no reports, nor has she provided any information about how the project is coming along.

As Marina changed her career path years ago based upon a tragic incident while Dr. Swenson was her medical school professor, she is not at all convinced she is the right person for the job. To make things worse, the drug she is given for malaria in preparation for the trip awakens nightmares about her father that she had as a child.

In Manaus, the airport loses her luggage and she is left waiting, because no one knows where Dr. Swenson’s camp is. Finally, Dr. Swenson arrives and reluctantly takes her back into the Amazon to the encampment of scientists, all investigating their own projects. In a way, this journey into the heart of darkness is also a journey Marina takes to confront her own past.

It is difficult to describe why this is such a wonderful book without giving too much away. If you are expecting a travelogue of beautiful jungle sights, you’ll be disappointed. Manaus is an unpleasant city, although with a gorgeous opera house, and Patchett describes the Amazon as both beautiful and terrible at the same time.

The plot takes unexpected turns as Marina gets involved in life at the outpost and becomes attached to a young deaf boy. It’s a book that is written in exquisite prose, that is totally enthralling, that you do not want to put down.

Day 64: The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey

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Cover for River of DoubtIn 1913, ex-President Theodore Roosevelt departed on a trip up an unknown river in the Amazon with a party that included his son Kermit, Brazil’s most famous explorer Candido Mariano da Silva Rondon, and the naturalist George Cherrie. Because the trip was originally planned to be less challenging and also because it was provisioned (by the leader of a failed arctic expedition) with more of an eye to comfort than practicality, the party soon found itself in dire straits, and by the end of the trip Roosevelt was near death.

In The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey, Candice Millard writes a compelling tale of this dangerous journey to a completely unexplored region, which ended by putting a 1000-mile river on the map of Brazil. In a hostile environment that the explorers found strangely lacking in food, they were at times very close to attack from the Cinta Larga Indians, who had only had a small amount of exposure to Brazilian rubber hunters–and that had been violent. The group also had to deal with boats that were unsuited to the rapids they encountered, disease, dangerous animals, and theft and murder by one of their party.

Whether Millard is explaining the scientific reasons behind the jungle’s apparent lack of food, the geology of the region, or the dramatic events of the trip, she writes with absolute clarity and interest. Although this book reminded me a great deal of The Lost City of Z, which I reviewed earlier and also enjoyed, I thought it was much more interesting and better written.

Day Seventeen: The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon

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Cover for The Lost City of ZThe Lost City of Z by David Grann tells the story of a famous British explorer, Percy Fawcett, and his obsession with finding the fabled city of El Dorado in the Amazon. He was the last of the great Victorian adventurers and possibly the inspiration for Indiana Jones (and for the explorer in the movie Up).

Fawcett made a career of exploring the Bolivian and Brazilian Amazon, beginning with being hired by the Bolivian government to establish its border in the Amazon. He became convinced that there had been a large city, which he called Z, in the region of the Xingu River. Hundreds of expeditions had been made to find it, beginning in the 16th century, and many of them were never seen again.

In 1925 Fawcett set off on an expedition funded by the Royal Geographical Society with a small party that included his son and son’s best friend. He sent daily dispatches back from the jungle that were published in the newspapers and waited for with anticipation by the general public. Then the dispatches stopped, and he was never seen again.

But the story wasn’t over. Others went into the jungle to try to find out what happened to him, including a famous movie star. Many of them never returned, either.

Grann, a staff writer for The New Yorker, became interested in the subject, which he came upon while working on another project. During his research, he met with members of the Fawcett family and was given access to a some previously unpublished personal papers. He is able to provide insight into the explorer’s character and thought processes, which makes for a fascinating story.

Grann also became consumed with the fate of the Fawcett expedition and found himself deciding to follow in Fawcett’s footsteps. Although his trip through the Amazon in a jeep was no Victorian expedition, he himself is no explorer. He was surprised to find the Amazon almost as wild today as it was 100 years ago.

And maybe he solved the mystery of what happened to Fawcett’s expedition. The story of Fawcett’s adventures makes compelling reading, and the ending is unexpected.