It's the true story of Percy Fawcett who was an explorer in the Amazon jungle in the early to mid 1900s. He was quite successful and famous in his time. He insisted that he would find a "lost city" in the Amazon. He called the city Z. He went on several expeditions into the Amazon. I found that part hard to read, because there were so many deadly snakes, bugs, diseases, dangers, and illnesses that they suffered. Fawcett, however, seemed to have a magic power to survive what others found intolerable.
Many other explorers were fascinated by the idea of a Lost City and also went on fruitless searches, often giving up, going mad, or dying before realizing their dream.
Flash to the present day, and the author, a reporter, has caught the bug to follow Fawcett's trail. The book then jumps between the two stories: Fawcett in the 1920s and the author in the 2000s. He, too, is attempting to find the City of Z, as well as collecting information about Fawcett and his story.
The entire book is about an obsession that would never take hold of me, and adventures that I would never undertake. Reading about them, however, was quite interesting and even spell-binding at times. I am now headed over to Google Earth to take a look, from above, at the area they explored.
1 comment:
Like you, I have zero interest in difficult adventures & intense experiences, but I love reading about them. I read this one a few years ago & really enjoyed it.
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