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Max Austin
, December 20, 2013
I read this book twice: once for the adventure of it and second to think more about the characters and the themes. In the first read, the plot and worrying about characters kept me reading fast. In 1952 Don Seale, a kid from Texas, and his best friend Rosita, a Venezuelan girl, go on a poorly-planned adventure and become lost in the interior of Venezuela. Threatened by bandits, they steal a canoe and escape down a river that runs through a wild jungle where they must find food, build shelter, and even make clothing. Both love the adventure until they witness a missionary murder a native healer who had befriended them. The murder is the climactic scene in the novel. Eventually the 2 make it back to the village where their families live. The novel kept me laughing and at the same time worried about the 2 kids. A thread that runs through the book is that belief creates reality, and there are several characters who offer different takes on what that means. Another thread or theme has to do with religion and the nature of God. Rosita proclaims that God is a woman, and Don says he is an atheist but affirms that God cannot be a woman. The working out of the theme of the nature of God is often humorous and involves some really funny characters such as a miner named El Loco (who says no one makes free choices) and a pill salesman, Sam Dean from Abilene, who fusses at God and blames Him for all sorts of Sam’s misfortunes. Another theme is the coming of age: the 2 kids travel through a kind of primordial garden, sometimes walking nude and always in complete innocence. Then they experience some genuine horrors from adults. After that they perceive the jungle as a dangerous place, which it was all along though they did not know it. At the end they are still innocent in many ways, but they possess some wisdom born of suffering, and yet they loved their adventure enough to agree to go down the river again after they grow up. A first-rate novel, this was a delight to find, and I’m surprised it comes from a tiny literary press and not one of the big presses in NY.
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