The White Mary: A Novel - Hardcover

Salak, Kira

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805088474 ISBN 13: 9780805088472

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co., 2008

Synopsis

A young woman journeys deep into the untamed jungle, wrestling with love and loss, trauma and healing, faith and redemption, in this sweeping debut from “the gutsiest woman adventurer of our day” (Book Magazine)

Marika Vecera, an accomplished war reporter, has dedicated her life to helping the world’s oppressed and forgotten. When not on one of her dangerous assignments, she lives in Boston, exploring a new relationship with Seb, a psychologist who offers her glimpses of a better world.

Returning from a harrowing assignment in the Congo where she was kidnapped by rebel soldiers, Marika learns that a man she has always admired from afar, Pulitzer-winning war correspondent Robert Lewis, has committed suicide. Stunned, she abandons her magazine work to write Lewis’s biography, settling down with Seb as their intimacy grows. But when Marika finds a curious letter from a missionary claiming to have seen Lewis in the remote jungle of Papua New Guinea, she has to wonder, What if Lewis isn’t dead?

Marika soon leaves Seb to embark on her ultimate journey in one of the world’s most exotic and unknown lands. Through her eyes we experience the harsh realities of jungle travel, embrace the mythology of native tribes, and receive the special wisdom of Tobo, a witch doctor and sage, as we follow her extraordinary quest to learn the truth about Lewis—and about herself, along the way.

About this title

About the Author:

Kira Salak has won the PEN award for journalism and appeared five times in Best American Travel Writing. She is a contributing editor for National Geographic Adventure magazine and was the first woman to traverse Papua New Guinea; her nonfiction account of that trip, Four Corners, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2001. Her fiction has appeared in Best New American Voices and other publications.

From AudioFile:

This gripping first novel involves a young female journalist, Marika Vecera, who travels to remote and dangerous places--from the war-torn Congo to the jungles of Papua New Guinea. Joyce Bean voices a wide range of multiethnic characters and regional accents, Pidgin English, and English accents. She expresses the emotions of the fast-paced prose without neglecting the building tension of the story. Marika's search for a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent, who's supposed to have died but who she believes may well be alive, and Salak's descriptions of jungle life are riveting. Harrowing, unforgettable scenes--some depicting torture--are difficult to listen to, but the story will keep listeners engaged. S.C.A. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

About this edition

• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0805088474
• ISBN 13: 9780805088472
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368