David Grann's account of the legendary explorer Fawcett

As my parents read aloud the story of Arctic explorer Ernest Shackelton on his disastrous journey to the Antarctic during my childhood, I was forever biased towards the world of adventure. A vivid imagination in my little head recreated the peril those men faced in the cold and hopeless situations and that peril became the definition by which I must judge any adventure story, especially one about a British guy charging off into the unknown. I carried all this imagery into The Lost City of Z, New Yorker Contributor David Grann’s first book. Grann’s resume of writing for the New Yorker has him uniquely prepared to retell the life of legendary explorer Percy Fawcett and his eventual disappearance in the Amazon Jungle. Writing on topics as far ranging as giant squid hunts and the political world can load any man with the ammo for storytelling. This diversity of interests and the ability to weave a story shows through in the pages of The Lost City of Z.

Bitten by the same bug that caused so many to follow in Fawcett’s doomed footsteps, Grann sets off to retrace the journey of a final expedition that riveted the world… the quest for the lost headquarters of an ancient civilization centered in an unexplored Amazon. Fortunately, Grann avoids inserting himself too often in the story, detracting from the excitement of Fawcett’s life. Percy Fawcett needs no embellishment, the details of his life are adapted and construed to make fictional adventurers entertaining.

From Percy Fawcett’s beginnings as an explorer to his early mind bending quests to map the border of Bolivia and Brazil, every quest is told in gritty detail. The terrors of the Amazon came in many forms, like the electric eels (puraque) that send 650 volts through their victims where, “one shock is sufficient to paralyze and drown a man-but the way of the puraque is to repeat the shocks to make sure of its victim.” or the piranhas that, “will rend and devour alive any wounded man or beast; for blood in the water excites them to madness.” Malaria, Fawcett’s breakneck pace, starvation, infection of wounds, mosquitoes, violent natives were  just a few of the ways the Amazon killed off expedition members. The inhumanity of the landscape led many to think that no civilization could survive on such harsh terrains, but Fawcett thought otherwise. Over his many expeditions from 1906 to his final expedition in 1925 he pieced together the clues that led him to believe an ancient civilization was based somewhere in the Amazon and that he was destined to find it. Fawcett was a rebel in many forms: he fought notions that “unsophisticated non-whites” could build a civilization in the Amazon and he worked with Madame Blavatsky as she formed the early Theosophical Society rebelling against the spiritual oppression of the time. Fawcett had a tremendous respect for the native Amazonians, they were masters of the local environment. When an expeditioner was struck with maggots, “The Echojas would make a curious whistling noise with their tongues, and at once the grub’s head would issue from the blowhole… the Indian would give the sore a quick squeeze and the invader was ejected.” Other fascinating accounts include how the Indians would make noises to draw monkeys out of the trees that were quickly subdued for a fast meal. I’m thinking this was like a native version of McDonalds.

My favorite parts of the book are the excerpts from Fawcett’s journals and those of his expedition members like an accompanying naturalist that wrote, “my body mass of bumps from insect bits, wrist and hands swollen from bits of tiny gnats. 2 nights with almost no sleep-simply terrible… my shoes have been soaked since starting…worst ticks so far…my first experience with flesh and carrion-eating bees.”

Or when Fawcett wrote, “The animals staggered forward, out of breath, their noses bleeding from a lack of oxygen… ‘a mule’s load would often knock the animal screaming over the precipices,’ “

Ultimately though, it was all about the final expedition that captivated the world and ending with Fawcett’s disappearance along with his son. A mystery which was never solved. Grann recounts all the various theories and the available evidence adding his own experience with the Kalapalo tribe. After meeting with the Kalapalo tribes, Grann learns that they passed down an oral history about Fawcett. This oral tradition said that Fawcett and his party had stayed at their village and then left, heading towards “fierce Indians”  the Kalapalos warned them of. The Kalapalo people eventually saw Fawcett’s nightly campfire disappear. Fawcett often walked into arrow fire from vicious tribes to offer gifts of peace, but perhaps in this scenario he was finally conquered. Ironically, recent work from archeologists in the area have begun to reveal evidence for networks of roads and oral histories a city that could be the Lost City of Z Fawcett so desperately hoped to find.

David Grann’s account of Fawcett’s struggles and disappearance brought back all the childhood excitement of Shackelton’s adventures and that’s all I need in a great historical account of an expedition.