Product Description
When Pittsburgh attorney Whitehill begins his vacation, he is anticipating a leisurely jaunt across South America. But he gets more than he bargained for when a sightseeing trip goes awry, leaving him stranded in the heart of the Amazon jungle. Whitehill isn’t exactly the outdoorsy type—he hikes in Brooks Brothers pants—so he is relieved when he meets a scientist perusing the jungle for medicinal plants and insects. Of course, the good doctor’s true motives are less than altruistic, and Whitehill soon finds himself being forcibly marched through the rainforest en route to certain death. When he escapes, with the help of some hungry vampire bats, Whitehill falls in with an English-speaking Indian whose tribe is at the heart of a raging land conflict. Trapped in the jungle, Whitehill must gather what little courage he has to stop an Indian war and preserve a vanishing culture from rapacious developers. Along the way, he has a fling with a gorgeous native, narrowly survives being sacrificed to the gods, and is rescued from a bombing by a pair of hard-drinking American expats. A Guest in the Jungle is a smart, engrossing, and uproariously funny novel about the power of one man to make a difference in the world.
About the Author
James Polster hails from Cleveland, Ohio and has worked as novelist, movie producer, screenwriter, explorer and journalist. After graduation from Tulane University in 1969, Polster hopped a freighter for Spain and eventually settled in Tangiers. He returned to the United States to attend graduate school at Columbia and Harvard. Beginning in 1973, Polster explored the Amazon Rainforest on several trips, spent time in the jungles of Irian Jaya with cannibals in 1989, and both covered and played in the World Championships of Elephant polo for Sports Illustrated in Nepal in 1991. Polster is a National Fellow of the Explorers Club. He currently lives in Los Angeles with his son Nick.
