Ruthless River: Love and Survival by Raft on the Amazon's Relentless Madre de Dios

by Holly Conklin FitzGerald

Holly FitzGerald and her husband, Fitz—married less than two years—set out on a yearlong honeymoon adventure of a lifetime, backpacking around the world. Five months into the trip, their plane crash-lands in Peru at a penal colony walled in by jungle, and their blissfully romantic journey turns into a terrifying nonstop labyrinth of escape and survival.

On a small, soon-ravaged raft that quickly becomes their entire universe through dangerous waters alive with deadly animals and fish, their only choice: to continue on despite the rush of insects swarming them by day, the sounds of encroaching predators at night. Without food or means of communication, with no one to hear their cries for help or on a search-and-rescue expedition to find them, the author and her husband make their way, fighting to conquer starvation and navigate the brute force of the river, their only hope for survival, in spite of hunger and weakening resolve, to somehow, miraculously, hang on and find their way east to a large riverside town—before it is too late.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Travel, Adventure, Survival, Audiobook, Biography

336 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 30, 2017

Reviews

[Kai · Rating 3 out of 5]

Goodness. I struggled with the rating on this one. Going with a 2.5 rounded up to a three. These folks ended up floating / drifting down a South American river on a precarious raft with very little in the way of supplies. Their situation was the result of a cluster of bad decisions fueled by the idiocy and impatience of youth. Bad luck had a small hand in their fate but they had good luck as well or this book would have never happened. And when they gave their bags to a random toothless guy with a machete and a wheelbarrow who then took off running through the jungle? This even turned out ok! I mean seriously. I think they were actually extremely lucky. They made one bad decision after another and lived to tell the tale. Good on you!

But I am aware that I am again in the minority. I love adventure and survival books but this one irritated the stuffing out of me. I found myself shaking my head and rolling my eyes a lot. I guess my biggest problem was with the writing. It was dialogue heavy and a lot of it was redundant. I'm unclear how you remember so much word for word dialogue after 45 years. It's just weird. And there were soooo many references to hair. Ummm..yea, I get it. Fritz has curly hair and you like to run your fingers through it. Come on! Say something else. I did like the flashbacks because they broke up the monotonous dialogue but that just gave me more insight into their cores. In one flashback, Fritz drunkenly stumbles outside their remote east coast cabin and screams into the air that all their neighbors are Nazis. And this is because no one showed up to their party? Wow. One more pet peeve. The God thing...ummm....God didn't forsake you. You made really, really stupid decisions. God didn't send you special little frogs, snails and worms because he wanted you to eat. They were part of that ecosystem. Just my opinion. Tough audience, party of one. :)

[Jessaka · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is 1 of the best true adveIntures/survival/love stories that I have read in a very long time. I would have love to have gone down the amazon river, but with a guide. .

Holly and her husband Fitz decide to take part of their honeymoon in the amazon rain forest. They desired to take a raft down one of the rivers. They are shown how to make a raft and are told that they do not need a guide, that the river will take care of them if they stay in the middle of the river for the current will carry them to their destination which is 10 days away. Well, everything went wrong. And as the reader of this book will see the story opens up with them starving to death on their raft. What is most enduring is the love that they show towards each other through out their ordeal.
.

[Donna · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is truly about a trip to hell, staying awhile and then getting back to real life. This is a non-fiction story about a young couple getting lost on the Amazon, unable to get help. The story was suspenseful. I kept thinking, "What else could possibly go wrong?" only to have that question answered in the affirmative with the next paragraph. The story is definitely worth reading.

This did get repetitive which caused some eye rolling. And some where after the first half, it started feeling long. This book could have been shorter, but it was still quite intense.

[Joy D · Rating 4 out of 5]

True story of Holly and “Fitz” FitzGerald’s journey down the Rio Madre de Dios in Bolivia in 1973. As young newly marrieds, they decide to honeymoon in the Amazon Rainforest. They took some pretty extreme risks, in line with the inexperience and bravado of youth. It is a story of endurance in harsh conditions and working together to try to figure out how to survive. I found it engrossing. It shows that love and optimism can play a key role in survival. As an armchair traveler, I enjoyed reading about their adventures – just don’t ask me to follow in their footsteps!

[MacWithBooksonMountains Marcus · Rating 2 out of 5]

The account has potential. Sadly, the narrator just swamps the reader with sentimentality and semi-hysteric hyperboles. The narrators whiney soft voice doesn’t exactly help. A lost opportunity - this could have been a great survival story.

[Lisa K · Rating 2 out of 5]

Let me save everyone some time: some white people with zero patience wanted an adventure and when their plane crashed they decided to take a log raft down the amazon instead of waiting for another one. This reads like the type of long Facebook post that made me quit Facebook.

[Caryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. A fascinating account of a couple on their honeymoon stranded in the South American jungle. Parts reminded me of Unbroken when they were stranded in the ocean. Thought it could have been a bit shorter, hence reason for lower rating. It's hard to read about their circumstances but it was a place and scenario I've never read about before.

[Jean · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was given to me by a friend. She read it on the plane returning home from a trip to the Amazon. This is a non-fiction book about Holly and Fitz FitzGerald about their trip in 1973 on the Madre de Dios River in Bolivia. The story was interesting and kept me engaged wondering what next could go wrong. But I was also frustrated with their impatience and stupid decisions. They should probably require city people to take a simple survival course before going on a trip like this.

The book was published by Vintage Press on May 30 2017. It is 336 pages.

[Clara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started this one afternoon and kept reading pretty much straight thru to the end with occasional pauses, many of them to get food (a comment you will understand if you read the book). This is an amazing story of adventure, youthful foolishness, and luck (both good and bad). Try it!

[Alison · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was quite a harrowing adventure that this couple took after their wedding. Holly and Fritz were going to travel the world for a year and while in Peru and just 5 months into their travels, they take a small plane from one jungle town in Peru to another in Bolivia both of which run along the Madre de Dios river in the Amazon. Their plane crash landed a short while later , luckily no one was hurt, but the only place nearby was a penal colony in the Peruvian jungle, where they would stay for a few nights before deciding what to do. It turned out either they needed to wait a couple of months for transportation, or they were told that they could take a raft, and with the rapid currents arrive at their destination, soon. So thinking it would be easy, they made a few adjustments to a raft they were given, and thinking they could get food from natives along the way took off. The first few days seemed easy enough but then a storm hit throwing them off course, and here is where the nail biting 27 days stranded, with no food starts.
This story will make it hard for you to stop reading, as you want to see if they make it out of this predicament.
It was also interesting to see how they held it together during this time, how it affected both their mental and physical state.
A very engrossing read, and a journey worth taking.
Thank you NetGalley and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

[Shan Hulud · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can't get over how misleading the blurb on this book is; to describe their situation as crash landing into a Peruvian penal colony and then fighting for their lives fails to mention that they were taken care of in the penal colony, flown to another town, and then WILLINGLY CHOSE TO FLOAT DOWN A RAFT WITH INADEQUATE SUPPLIES AND NO KNOWLEDGE OF RAFTING???

After the plane originally crashed, we also learn that Holly only has sandles and heels for their Amazon trip. It's hard to imagine that they put so much effort into planning this trip, and couldn't even fathom bringing closed toe shoes to the rainforest. Honestly, this book is just a collection of stupid white people being unprepared for nature, and then constantly blaming or thanking God for everything that occurs due to their terrible choices.

It wasn't an entirely terrible story, but the couple was so unlikable, and their situation so completely their own fault, that it detracted from the benefits of reading of their improbable survival. Again, I find the description of this book on the back cover and Goodreads misleading to an unethical degree, and it made their stupid choices all the more irritating.

[Daniel Riley · Rating 2 out of 5]

The hallmark of good adventure writing is the sympathetic protagonist. Whether it’s the capable and experienced party confronted with an unexpected natural event (Dead Mountain) or the individual who blunders admittedly into disaster (127 Hours), the protagonist should be someone whose ultimate fate is interesting to the reader.

There are no sympathetic protagonists in Ruthless River. The book recounts the foolhardy misadventure of a couple on honeymoon. They nearly blunder into death but don’t seem to learn anything or experience any personal growth as a result of their mistakes. A certain Christian fatalism pervades the book and comes across as unnecessarily preachy and moralizing.

[Cav · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The thumping wakes me. Small, dark shapes bump against the faded sheeting of the pink plastic tent on our balsa log raft. It’s the bees again.
They want in.
It’s only about nine in the morning, but already our tent is sweltering. The tropical sun casts an intense circle of light halfway up the thin plastic. I want to open the flap for air, but when I do hundreds of bees will swarm inside to cover our emaciated bodies like hot moving blankets. They will lap the sweat off our sunburned tissue-paper skin, stinging constantly at our slightest movement.
Slowly, the Bolivian jungle is swallowing us alive..."

Ruthless River was a well-told look into a wild real-life story. I love reading books about incredible real-life sagas. I also love books about the Amazon - one of the last places on Earth to be fully explored. I also love books about well-intentioned people out of their depths who become caught in a struggle for survival. Well, this one ticked all three of those boxes, so naturally, I put it on my list when I came across it.

Author Holly FitzGerald was born in Seattle, Washington, and grew up in Woodbridge, Connecticut. She graduated from Lake Erie College and received a master's degree in counseling from Suffolk University. FitzGerald was a therapist for adults, children and families for many years before teaching and counseling at Bristol Community College, New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Holly and Fritz FitzGerald in 1972 :


FitzGerald gets the writing here off on a good foot, with an action-packed teaser of an intro, where she drops the quote above. The book is a retelling of an ill-fated adventure she went on in South America with her husband, Fritz in 1973. The book included many pics at the end, and I've included a few of them here. (Don't worry, I have covered ones that would give away the ending with spoilers)



The book is told in the first person, and the style and flow were quite good. Without giving too much of the story away, they embark from Peru to head down the Amazon River, and end up deciding to ride the current and float down some 500 miles of the river on a homemade raft (yes, really). Right away the trip is not off to a good start as their plane crashes upon landing.



What unfolds is the topic of this book, and it's a hell of a story. I'll summarize it below, but cover it with a spoiler. You can also read a summary of their ordeal (complete with pictures) in this link.

Summary:

*Their plane crash lands in a Peruvian jungle airstrip near a Penal Colony. They have to stay at the prison while they wait to decide what to do next.
*They look for a boat to take them downriver. There are no boats.
*While eating one day, they meet a man named Jaun who advises them to make a raft and float down the river by themselves. He says that the current is strong, and will carry them all the way. There are only a few branches that lead away from the river, and they all meet back up with the river again.
*Against all better judgment, they decide to drift down on a handmade raft. (see pics below)
*An overnight storm sends them off course, into a dead end branch of the river, and tossing most of their supplies.
*The raft they built is too heavy to be maneuvered upstream.
*They make another smaller raft to go upstream. They can't get this one past the strong current, either.
*They try to laterally cross the jungle. They fail.
*They decide to try to swim upstream, and fail again. They go back to their raft, and awake one morning to a swarm of bees attacking them.
*They try to use a net to catch a fish. They catch 3 tiny minnows and eat them.
*They find some small snails, and cook them to eat. 9 snails and 2 frogs.
*A new raft drifts by, and they grab it.
*They scavenge some baby birds, and a few large grasshoppers to eat.
*They find many more small frogs, and eat them.
*They are stuck in the dead-end swamp for a total of 26 days, drinking river water, and eating insects and frogs.
*Two native men hunting monkeys paddle by their location by chance, see them and rescue them.
*They bring the couple back to their village and feed them.
*They take a water taxi to Riberalta, and are seen by a nurse for dehydration and emiciation. They stay in a hospital for a few weeks.
*After regaining some weight, they resume their traveling, and visit many more countries.


She drops this quote about the famous candiru fish (yes, the one that swims up your anus or urethra and sucks your blood):

"The only explicit advice Juan had actually given us was “Don’t ever swim in the water.”
“Why?” I had asked, taken aback. We’d watched the children splashing in the harbor, enjoying it with high squeals. “I thought the caiman are dormant during the rainy season.”
“They are. It’s the candiru you have to watch out for,” he’d said solemnly.
“The who?” Fitz had asked.
“A minuscule saw-toothed fish, downriver. They’ll swim up your butt and latch on to your intestines, suck your blood until you die.”
Fitz and I had stared at each other and then at him.
“You’re kidding?” I’d gasped. We’d seen piranha and knew that when in a frenzy they could strip prey to the bone within minutes, but mainly if the prey were already bleeding.
“You don’t have to be bleeding. Candiru are parasitic. They’ll find you if you’re swimming.”
“Okay, we definitely won’t be swimming,” Fitz had agreed."

The raft they named "The Pink Palace" and Fritz on the expedition:






I have read quite a few books like this, and in almost all of them, there is a point where you invariably ask yourself: What the hell were these people thinking?? What in God's name gave them the idea that floating down 500 miles of virtually unexplored Amazonian River on a makeshift raft was a good idea?? In the middle of the rainy season when you have zero experience the river, no first-hand knowledge of its course, with little supplies, no map, and being completely out of range of any possible help. I feel like there was a Darwinian mechanism at play here...

It was only by sheer luck and the grace of God that they came out of this misadventure alive. You wouldn't in a million years catch me doing something like this, but I do admit that the stories of these sagas are super-interesting. Especially when the people (obviously) lived to tell the tale.

As mentioned above, the book included many pictures. Here are the ones that show how it all ended up, for anyone interested:

"At Santo Domingo with Roque and Silverio, the two heroes who came upon us just in time.
Fitz is able to stand only by clutching Roque’s trousers with his left hand. I am standing but barely"





********************

I enjoyed Ruthless River. It's got 1) Morons doing incredibly foolish and reckless things way out of their depth, 2) A real-life struggle for survival, and 3) Travelling in the wild Amazon. You'd be hard-pressed to mess up a book with all three of these magical ingredients...
5 stars.

[Cruz Longoria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Audiobook roadtrip on the way to Colorado with Natalie. Long story short: a couple tries to survive each other and the elements for extended periods of time, which is also what the book’s about.

[Ashley Colletti · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm really having trouble understanding why and how this book's average rating is 4/5 stars. I read a ton of adventure/survival books (most recently, Endurance, The Indifferent Stars Above, Wild, The Impossible First, to name a few). While I don't always agree with the terms and decisions made by the adventurers, I approach each with an open mind. I also have gained an appreciation for the spiritual journey with unclear end and unfortunate terms that John Krakauer shared in his study of Chris McCandless' complex, short life. However, I have nothing positive to say about Ruthless River. Two unprepared, privileged young people end up in the jungle. They spontaneously decide to explore by river raft despite having zero navigation skills, zero familiarity with the environment, and then whoops! there goes their food supply off the raft? Now they're on the brink of starvation waiting it out until someone discovers them and takes them to safety? They did zero education to familiarize themselves with safe and edible food sources, randomly praying to God as they ingested whatever berry or slug along the way, "it's in God's hands now"? Seriously? I debated not finishing it. What irritates me the most is that after imposing on native peoples on the brink of survival themselves for charity hospital care, they make no mention of donating funds to the hospital where they spent more than two weeks rehabilitating from their near starvation? Afterword mentions no thanks to these charity workers or native peoples, just la-de-da here we are again recovering in our parents' vacation home and Christmas-ing in Thailand.... What a waste of time.

[Barb · Rating 2 out of 5]

Spoiler Alert: plot, outcome

I know a lot of people loved this book. And it's an amazing story. For me, the delivery was flat, felt inauthentic, and left me feeling....cheated. Who ARE these people? What are their circumstances that made it possible for them to actually be on this adventure (and so many others, later in life?) And across the course of 30+ days of facing relentless terror and starvation did they really NEVER have a cross word for each other? If so, then they really need to be writing a tell-all book about the secrets to their extraordinary emotional regulation; the world needs THAT. Disappointing.

[Janilyn Kocher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ruthless River is a story of a couple's survival in the South American jungle after naively believing they could placidly float down the river to the next location. They might have been that lucky too, if a storm hadn't veered them off the main river. What followed was survival due to sheer grit, tenacity, and a miraculous discovery. It's a great read, if not nerve wracking.

[Emily Kestrel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is firmly within one of my favorite unofficial genres, "the travelogue from hell." The author relates the experience that she and her husband endured when they decided to go rafting in the Amazon back in the early 1970s. Things went wrong, and they ended up stranded in a remote part of the jungle for almost a month, nearly starving to death before they were rescued.

Travel experience from hell? Absolutely. The kind of story that makes me think, "Maybe it's not entirely bad that I'm stuck in central Illinois for the foreseeable future and won't be having experiences like this." Holly Fitzgerald is not a bad writer, and her story is very detailed and earnest. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading tales of travel gone wrong.

And yet, I found this just an average, three-star read. I'm not sure what's missing, but I would guess the key ingredient is self-reflection. Fitzgerald and her husband had a truly awful experience and lived to tell the tale, but she never really convinced me that they really learned from it or integrated it into their lives. On the contrary, they seem to want to pick up their backpacks again almost immediately, without a pause for reflection. And I guess that's okay; some people are like that, and they have stories too. I just wanted a bit more at the end to bring it all together.

Overall: worth a read, but not my favorite in the genre.

[Suzanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

(this is a cut and paste of the review I wrote for Amazon)

I got this book in the mail yesterday, thought to myself "I'll just read a page or two" and next thing I knew, it was late at night and I was finishing it. It's that kind of book---completely captivating.

The plot in a nutshell---Holly and Fitz are on an extended honeymoon in South America in the early 70s. A series of events (a plane crash, a town without transportation out, a rafting trip everyone assures them is perfectly safe, a storm) lead to them being stranded off course, unable to fight the current and get back where they need to be. And slowly, they are starving to death. I don't think there could be much of a better description of what it would feel like to starve to death, to be dying not in a dramatic way but in a slow and exhausting way than the author's telling here. It's easy to write about high drama, but much harder to write well about the little details that add up to a growing horror, and it's amazingly done here. It's hard to believe the author hasn't written anything else.

If you like adventure tales, travel tales, or even tales of marriage and its tests, this is a book you'll want to read. I will be recommending it to many.

[Char Freund · Rating 3 out of 5]

Intense read making it a page turner that I read in two days. But couldn’t help wondering at the naivety of the main characters. Their spontaneousness in adjusting itinerary without proper preparedness was more a badge of foolery than free spiritedness.

Something I read more about (as a nurse): Can a parasite remain dormant for decades? Google Vietnam parasite and liver cancer.

Can only give 3/5 as it wasn’t the best written tale of survival. Read River of Doubt about Teddy Roosevelt’s 1912 Amazon adventure for a more detailed account of the symbiosis of plants and animals, the indigenous tribes, and the harshness of the river and surrounding jungle. One comment from ROD that stands out is the madness than can develop from the monotonous sameness of surroundings whether it is months at sea or along an uncharted river.

There are also some overlapping situations: the fixation on food when it is not available, rethinking the type of water vehicle, the swarms of insects and their nerve racking effect, and the dangerous fish in the Amazon.

[Noorilhuda · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s hard to tell how much dramatic license has been taken in this well-done nail-biting trip-in-hell that’s incredibly a true story - a newlywed couple have the astoundingly dumb idea to go ‘sailing’ in the Amazon to move from point A to B, when they have zero experience of rafts, place, river, weather and survival - but know that the water may have piranhas, caimans, snakes and alligators. They also bundle too little food, thinking they’ll just ‘catch a fish’ out there!

Also well-done is the pace and frequent ‘breathers’ / flashbacks that form a macabre good-old-days to the horrifying reality of being lost and hopeless. Especially in the case of Holly, who was born with a silver spoon and had the best of the best in everything.

The pics are at the end of the book. I am surprised that the couple did not click any pics in the 26 days they were in Lago Santa Maria (channel off the actual Madre De Dios) other than a single shot of the raft.

Irritants:
a) The entire behavior of Holly (and Fitz) after being rescued purely by chance: e.g. on being rescued by the locals (‘Indians’) who allow them to bring valuables on their small canoe, Holly cribs about the Indians tearing the ‘Pink Palace’ and ‘Balsa’ rafts to shreds looking for ‘nails, oil can, floor boards’ (they are poor people for God’s sake); they are also suspicious of the Indians (if they wanted to kill you, they would have done it next to your beloved rafts); they reward one of the Indians with ‘10 rings made of straw’ (!) - only to take their white hen and 3 eggs which amounted to a week’s wage for the poor fellows; sleeping in the very cozy humane back-to-civilization sitting room in Barraca Santo Domingo, Holly cribs about the floor and mosquitoes; they decide to continue their ‘journey’ in Riberalta despite the fact that any other sensible person would have taken a few days rest and replenishment after a 26-day starvation (or slug-snail, baby frog diet) and a thorough check-up for any water-borne diseases; they fall near a hospital, have difficulty walking towards it but have enough strength to chat up the nuns.

b) What happened to Roque, Silverio and Gregoria in the decades following the incident?

c) I did not like the way Holly mentions her ‘New Fairfield’ neighbors - she and Fitz rented a cottage near the place and she instantly calls the ‘mostly German’ residents as ‘xenophobic’ apart from recounting how she went to invite them ‘personally’ to her party and not only did no one open the door, none of them came to her party either. Her ‘inebriated’ husband calls them ‘Nazis’.

d) I did not believe the saved teaspoon of sugar, nor the bee arrival and stings, nor the conversations between the couple.

But then again, they have been married 47 years. If you can get hitched to someone after two months of dating and then stay happily married, anything’s possible.

[Forrest · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic memoir of a young couple honeymooning in South America in the 1970's when they naively chose to travel by raft down the Madre De Dios river from Puerto Maldonado, Peru to Riberalta, Bolivia. The trip would last several days. They ended up getting lost, stranded out in the middle of the sweltering, bug infested jungle.

This was particularly interesting for me because it brought me back several years ago when my wife and I embarked on a trip similar to theirs (except we never became lost). In 2007 we threw everything in storage and spent 4 months traveling throughout Peru and Bolivia. Our trip included some of the places the author mentioned visiting such as Lima, La Paz, Cusco, and Puno. Our trip included the mountainous rain forest northeast of Lake Titicaca as well as Parque Nacional Carrasco northeast of Cochabamba. We traveled along "Death Road" to Caranavi. We had intended to travel deeper into the Bolivian Amazonas but flooding in the region in February 2007 prevented us from doing so. Our trip included dozens of cities, parks, villages, etc throughout both countries.

We even managed to embark on a 5-day excursion along the Amazon River east of Iquitos Peru. The jungle is as terrifying and amazing as the author describes. The mosquitos are bigger than those in the U.S. and can penetrate clothing. My wife who was wearing tight jeans developed large welts up and down her legs. We visited villages on the trip including a "native tribal village". In truth, these were actors who entertained tourists for a living, but it made no difference to us and the experience was phenomenal as well as safe. Reaching an actual tribal village requires a river plane or several days by river and on foot. It is also dangerous and requires permission from authorities. Besides, many who embark on such a quest return without ever contacting anyone or are refused contact by the tribe.

The jungle never sleeps. The constant drone of insects accompanied us wherever we went day and night. We fished for piranha and witnessed all kids of wildlife including caymans (crocks), anacondas, boas, pink river dolphins, strange looking turtles, and all kids of birds, insects, reptiles, vegetation, flowers, and lily pads the size of a van. Even a giant tapir walked right through our campsite. The Amazon is an incredible place. It's beauty and ferocity is unlike anywhere else on Earth.

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another book full of reasons I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever explore the Amazon (or any of its tributaries):

First of all, the river is called MOTHER OF GOD!!! Isn't that enough of a warning? In the early 1970s, a young American couple (a Vietnam vet turned writer and a therapist) decide to take an extended trip around the world, starting in South America. After a series of mishaps, including their small commuter plane crashing at a penal colony in the middle of the jungle, they decide to navigate the 400 miles down a winding river, during the rainy season, on a raft. They get washed into a flooded offshoot during a storm and are stuck there for almost a month. Obviously, they eventually get rescued, since the author wrote this memoir 40 years later.

Overall, the story was pretty amazing and entertaining -- but the day after day on the raft became very slow and repetitive. I feel like it could have been a lot shorter.

A few thoughts:
The author's husband (nicknamed Fitz, presumably because his/their last name is FitzGerald) comes off as a bit of an ass, even though that doesn't seem like the author's intention.
Fitz is/was a writer -- poetry, newspaper articles, etc -- and yet, Holly is the one who wrote this book, after being urged by her daughter to take a memoir-writing class.
How different would the book be if Fitz had written it? And why didn't he write about their adventures (beyond the articles for the local paper that he was sending as they traveled)?

[Marti Dahlquist · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is no denying that what this couple went through was grueling and terrifying. But. I couldn’t help but feel some sympathy for the people who were called on to rescue them. How many kind Samaritans from under developed parts of the world have to be called on to pull another set of adventure seekers from distress?

At one point God is blamed and another point the officials who sent them down the river are blamed. There was soul searching to what terrible act they may have perpetrated on humanity to end up in this situation. I just had to scratch my head because they went way way way out of their way to get in the predicament.

I’m glad they survived. I wish them no ill will, but if you are going to run out in the jungle without proper supplies, training, education you have to take what you get.

The detail of the slaughter and ingestion of the animals they encountered was more than what I would have preferred to know about.

I love a good survival story but the tones of “why me” and the impatience with the people involved with their rescue was off putting.

[Rorie Oglesby · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was extremely engaging. I found myself on days when I was the passenger in the business vehicle with no air, relating to the author about the sticky never-ending heat and appreciating all the food I was eating like it was a delicacy. My mind stayed on that brown river and swamp even when I was too busy with life to be able to pick up the book, and dreaming about what might happen next.

A few things that still drive me crazy are the whirl-pooling suction noise that would come each night at a certain time, it definitely is a bummer to never find out what that was. That's the thing about memoirs though I guess; real life sometimes doesn't come with answers.
Also, one other small pet-peeve. She took pictures the whole time as a photographer, but in all the 26 days they were imprisoned on their raft she never once thought to take a picture of the place they were one day away from dying in.
Really great read.

[SheReaders Book Club · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best book I have read in a long time! If you like survival and adventure stories, this tale does not disappoint. Of course, you know they live since she is writing this book but at some points while reading you begin to wonder "how in the world are they going to make it out of this?!" The real photos sprinkled in are the icing on the cake (or maybe the salt on the slugs in this case?). This tale reminds you of the fragility of life, the wonders of the earth, and you will find yourself very thankful for your next hot meal. It's absolutely incredible and I'm so glad the author shared her story with us lucky readers.

[Kelsey Kacher · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was insane. I couldn’t put it down from beginning to end. So many stupid decisions that kind of drove me nuts, but their survival was incredible. Loved when her life’s purpose became clear when they were so close to dying.

[Jeanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Moral of the story is don’t go down a river in the jungle on a hand-made raft

[Natalie Radcliffe · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little audio book action while road-tripping with Cruz. Good story, extremely grateful I’m reading about it and not experiencing it. Don’t get lost in the wild folks.

[Renate Flynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars
The hell that adventure brings, yet which cannot quench the desire for more.
Incredible story.
How I long to know the names of the butterflies, trees, frogs, bees, plants and all other wildlife Holly and Fitz saw and experienced.
Audio version is excellent.