Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 055358393X, Mass Market Paperback)
Bad-boy scientist Will Travers may have an Ivy League mind but he’s got the spirit of the jungle in his heart and the kiss of the Amazon on his body.
River of Eden
With his sun-bronzed skin, a week’s worth of beard, and a shaman’s crystal around his neck, Will Sanchez Travers looked more like a man mothers warned their daughters about than a Harvard-trained ethnobotanist. And even if only half the rumors about him were true, Dr. Annie Parrish figured she was in trouble. Still, she needed the rogue scientist to ferry her upriver in search of a prize so extraordinary, it would make her reputation–if it didn’t get her killed first.
When he’d reluctantly agreed to take the legendary Amazon Annie deep into the Brazilian rain forest, Will expected a woman warrior, not a blond ragamuffin renegade whose secrets ran darker than he could have imagined. But once the journey begins, there will be no turning back as they enter territory–of the wilderness and the heart–as dangerous as it is beautiful, desperate to stop a twisted destroyer of worlds before his nightmarish fantasy becomes horribly real. Amid sorcery, violence, and mystical visions, which will be the victor–the yearning for vengeance, or a power as potent and seductive as the heart of a singular, magical orchid?
(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:12 -0400)
Wikipedia in English
River of Eden is a romantic suspense story with a touch of the mystical, but that doesn't do it justice. It's a lush, intense story that transports you into the jungle, makes you believe that anything might be true, and gets your heart pounding. Heh. Wonder if reading it could substitute for a workout?
Dr. Annie Parish has returned to Brazil after being kicked out of the country the year before. She's risking everything to return for the rare, bio-luminescent (and sentient?) orchids she'd had to leave behind. She needs transportation up the river, and her best bet is Will Travers.
Dr. Will Travers, a world-respected botanist from Harvard, had disappeared into the jungle for a year, and now appears to be nothing more than a drunken river rat. He's obviously full of secrets, but Annie has secrets of her own, starting with the crates of weapons she loads onto his boat.
The two of them find themselves on a collision course, with both of them trying to get to the same place for different reasons. They're racing against time, and running from a fat gangster and directly toward an evil madman, and the shaman and his mystical snakes may or may not be on their side.
Along the way, they reluctantly fall in love, but this isn't the main focus of the story, which is possibly one reason why River of Eden stood out so strongly for me. Normally, in a romantic suspense book, you'll have the suspense plot, but every time the characters look at each other, there'll be romantic sparks, they can't think about each other without rhapsodizing over body parts, can't talk to each other without imagining their mouths doing other things. I hadn't realized how pervasive this was until I read River of Eden. I still believed, definitely, that Annie and Will fell in love, but it was accomplished without the... sugar coating. I think the difference is that River of Eden takes the suspense story seriously. It's not just a setting for the romance. Likewise, the romance isn't just tacked on as an afterthought.
Whoops. Getting perilously close to gushing there.
It's not easy to describe the feel of this book, but I'll try. Take the movie Romancing the Stone and slide it to the left a bit, make it a little more serious, a little more real, and a little more dream-like. Cover everything with a jungle mist, and add an ominous soundtrack of jungle drums.
Outside the story world, it's hard to accept risking everything Annie went through just for a couple of flowers, even if they would make her career, and the evil madman is too much The Evil Madman, but even that adds to the atmosphere, which demands you accept it all as real. (