Into the Jungle

Starred review from March 11, 2019
When the teaching job that lures scrappy 19-year-old foster care survivor Lily Bushwold, the narrator of this ferocious fever dream of a thriller from Ferencik (The River at Night), from Boston to Cochabamba, Bolivia, falls through, she decides to stay on. In Cochabamba, Lily falls hard for handsome mechanic Omar, and then, through the stories he tells, for the remote Amazonian jungle where his clan has lived for seven generations. So when Omar’s brother Panchito arrives from Ayachero, the tiny village Omar left years earlier, to ask Omar to return to lead the hunt for the jaguar that has killed their four-year-old nephew, Lily begs to go with him—pythons, tarantulas, and menacing neighboring Tatinga tribe be damned. And that’s not the half of it, Lily discovers once in Ayachero. Despite Lily’s fluent Spanish, Omar’s family and friends are none too welcoming to a gringa lacking any discernible skills to help a struggling community squeezed between ruthless poachers and the Tatinga. Ferencik delivers an alternately terrifying and exhilarating tale. Agent: Erin Harris, Folio Literary Management.

March 15, 2019
A death-defying Bolivian adventure in the primordial forest...starring a homeless teenager from Boston who just might be a shaman.Sleeping late isn't an option in the jungle. By the time the sun is up, it's "already ricocheting with the calls of monkeys, parrots, frogs, all going at it molto vivace, shrieking and squawking as if the world were waking up in pain, the jungle giving birth to itself each morning." The setting of Ferencik's (The River at Night, 2017) second female-driven adventure thriller is hair-raisingly vivid, replete with tarantulas, piranhas, jaguars, and electric eels. We experience them all through the eyes of Lily Bushwold, 19, "a half-starved, high strung wild child who lived out of a backpack, homeless since [she] was thirteen." Lily thought she had landed a dream job in South America but arrived to find herself the victim of a scam; she's living on shoplifted bananas in Cochabamba when she meets Omar, a handsome hunter from a remote jungle village who has come to try his luck in the big city. He and Lily have already fallen in love when he learns that his 4-year-old nephew back home has been eaten by a jaguar; when he returns to seek revenge, Lily goes with him. What does she have to lose, right? She finds out pretty quickly during the most terrifying plane flight in recent literary history. After a near crash and a water landing, it's welcome to Ayachero--Omar's jungle home, where everybody except one little cross-eyed boy immediately hates the gringa. "A burnt-meat smell, the reek of stale water, and a stray sweet whiff of pig dung merged with a humid, breathless heat." Among the unwelcoming locals are two missionaries named Harriet and a female shaman named Beya, an outcast from a rival tribe who lives in the woods nearby. When Beya is able to save Lily from death by coaching her telepathically through an electric eel encounter, her next question is, "Are you the only shaman in Boston?" Even with the telepathy, Lily's experience feels almost real--then, in the final chapters, takes a wild turn into superhero territory.The closest thing to an actual hell ride you'll ever experience (one hopes). Thrilling, bloody, and ferocious.

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May 1, 2019

Lily Bushwold, raised in foster care and lured to Bolivia with the promise of a job that didn't exist, is a survivor. She immediately finds work at a hostel and makes friends with other girls. When she meets Omar, they move quickly from lust to love. The arrival of Omar's brother with devastating news changes everything. Omar's nephew has been killed by a jaguar and Omar is needed back in their remote Amazonian village to hunt it down. Soon Lily is facing not only dangerous predators and poisonous frogs but the disdain of Omar's village. Told from the perspective of an older Lily looking back on her 19-year-old self, the narrative benefits from a wiser, more nuanced take on events. The author excels at writing action and does not disappoint with several exciting scenes involving menacing animals, poachers, and transportation difficulties. VERDICT With so much fierce realism, it comes as a distraction when Ferencik (The River Night) incorporates elements of magical realism. However, readers who accept Lily's telepathic link with the village's shaman will be turning pages eagerly to see what exhilarating adventure awaits her next.--Lynnanne Pearson, Skokie P.L., IL

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2019
Will the survival skills she learned in foster care sustain a 19-year-old gringa in the Amazon jungle? Lily Bushwold is working in a fleabag hotel in Cochabamba, Bolivia, lured to the country by a scam job offer to teach English, when she meets Omar Alvarez in a bar. But just weeks into their relationship, he's called back to his home of Ayachero in the Amazon jungle after his four-year-old nephew is killed by a jaguar, and Lily, in love, convinces Omar to take her along. So she not only must learn the jungle and its dangers?from its predatory inhabitants to a dangerous neighboring tribe to mercenary poachers?but she must also prove to Dona Antonia, Omar's mother, and the other villagers that she's not useless. Ferencik, who spent a month living in the Amazon, focuses on an untested woman needing to prove herself and survive in an alien environment. With its vividly evoked jungle setting, this is a riveting narrative that finds a fresh way to remind us that life is precious(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)