Ruthless River: Love and Survival By Raft on the Amazon's Relentless Madre de Dios
Holly FitzGerald
Vintage
Nonfiction, Memoir
Themes: Religious Themes, Seafaring Tales, Wilderness Tales
***+
Description
The year is 1973, and two Americans - counselor Holly and journalist Fitz FitzGerald - are traveling around the world on
their belated honeymoon. When their plans to get to Brazil in time for Carnivale season are disrupted near the Peruvian
border, they decide to travel as the locals do: by log raft down the Madre de Dios river, one of the wide tributaries to
the great Amazon. Neither one has rafting experience, but everyone assures them there's nothing to it; the river does all
the work, after all, and the waterways are dotted with settlements if there's any trouble along the way. Thus, Holly and
Fitz set forth on the Pink Palace, certain they'll be at their destination soon with a great story for the
relatives back home.
They didn't count on the wild currents that seem to have a will of their own, the gun-happy Bolivian border guards, or the
terrible storm that sweeps them off course, into a swampy backwater far from the main channel and countless miles from the
nearest settlements.
With no map or compass, barely any food, little clean water, and only the tattered shelter of the plastic tarp on their
raft, the American couple face a survival nightmare in terrain that has claimed the lives of travelers far more
experienced and prepared than themselves... and all without knowing if anyone even knows they're missing.
Review
The rain forests of South America remain some of the most forbidding wildernesses in the world, and were even moreso
in the 1970's. Even seasoned travelers could run into trouble easily, let alone starry-eyed tourists like the FitzGeralds.
They thought their previous experiences getting to Peru had made them equal to any challenge, but even before their
ill-fated raft trip, things start going wrong, such as when a plane trip ends in a crash-landing that strands the couple
and other travelers in a jungle prison while waiting for another flight. Of course, memoirs have the advantage of
hindsight; what looks like foreshadowing here was just part of the adventure of international travel in the moment.
Still, even then, Holly and Fitz get occasional twinges and warnings before they set out on the Madre de Dios... but
they were young, in love, dazzled and excited by their grand adventure, and - despite Fitz's previous tour in Vietnam -
still had a certain youthful expectation of immortality, that they would somehow make it through dangers with little
but an adrenaline rush and a new story for their next letters home. Thus, they set out on their raft with lots of
well-wishes from locals and sky-high hopes... but, as the saying goes, man proposes and nature disposes. Finding
themselves in a backwater flooded by the rainy season, the newlyweds get a crash course in the harsh realities of the
jungle outside even the thin veneer of civilization that stretches up the main waterways. Fitz's experiences in the
jungles of Vietnam do little to prepare him for the South American wilderness; in the war, at least, rescue was rarely
more than a radio call away. The couple struggle to come up with a plan, every day growing weaker and more despondent
as hopes for escape or rescue dim. The jungle teems with life, but finding food in their swampy niche proves nearly
impossible. Then there are the bugs... the bees... Interludes fill in the backstories of Holly and Fitz, how they met
and courted, and how it is they ended up on this trip to begin with, as the here-and-now of their plight grows bleaker
and more desperate. Still, even amid the terror, Holly finds moments of beauty and personal epiphanies, and the bond
between husband and wife only grows stronger as they lean on each other to get through the obstacles nature (or God -
there's a religious/spiritual angle to much of the narrative) keeps throwing their way.
As survival tales go, this is a decently harrowing adventure. Something about the later bits felt weaker, though,
particularly as it became more about Holly's religious reawakening and personal epiphanies. It also can't help becoming
a bit repetitious as the couple struggle and fail again and again. Those issues aside, the rest of the book evokes the
dangers and wonders of the deep wilderness, and how quickly that wilderness and its rules of raw survival can take over
when one ventures beyond civilization's safety net.