Reviews of The River of Strange People
"An addictively readable page-turner packed with marvelously fun historical set-pieces which transport the reader to lost worlds … depicting in equally vivid detail the violent lives of rapacious pirates and the indomitable spirit of a shipwrecked Victorian woman."
"This smart, suspenseful novel takes you on a Heart of Darkness-style mission up a jungle river, seeking the fountain of youth – only to find … fear in a handful of dust."
"… an enthralling tale of a young woman who sets out to claim her rightful inheritance only to find the astonishing truth about her family’s dark past. "
"Energetically written and packed with a rich cast of compellingly flawed characters"
"Jonathan Rowe weaves a magic tale from our oldest passions, moving from bloody Maya priests to shipwrecked lovers to modern pirates and doctors, who will stop at nothing to wrest an ancient Maya codex with the key to immortality from its mysterious wizened owner."
Synopsis
A modern American pirate steals a sacred icon from a Maya temple … a British cancer researcher seeks an elusive enzyme to save his son and make us all immortal … an American paralegal and single mother sues the cousin who raised her to gain possession of a priceless ancient Maya codex … and they all race up a steaming jungle river in Belize on a quest for the legendary fountain of youth, hidden for centuries by Maya separatists deep in the Yucatan rain forest.
The River of Strange People is a literary page-turner that crisscrosses the centuries to examine, through the skeptical eyes of three modern narrators (the pirate, the doctor and the paralegal), the histories and legends of several men and women who’ve sought the fountain of youth over the centuries: a renegade 16th century missionary, a boozy old 17th century buccaneer, a romantic 18th century painter, a free-spirited 19th century adventurer, and a reclusive 20th century Maya scholar.
As the modern characters use force, science, and legal process to peel back the layers of the past, they begin to believe there really is a fountain of youth, hidden deep in the Central American jungle. But since their investigation also exposes the astonishing and deadly consequences of seeking eternal youth, they must face the pressing question of just how far they’re willing to go, in their quest for immortality.
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Questions and Answers
- What is the novel about?
- What does the title refer to?
- Is the medical information in the novel true – about modern doctors closing in on inventing drugs to make us all immortal?
- Is the history in the novel accurate?
- Why is your fountain of youth in Belize instead of Florida?
- What about Ponce de Leon?
- Why’d we all learn about Ponce de Leon in school?
- Does your novel address the unreliability of history?
- How are the Maya portrayed in the novel?
- Who translated the Chaucer poem in the Preface?
- What links The Pardoner’s Tale and The River of Strange People?
- Why wouldn’t conquering death be a good thing for humanity?
- Q: WHAT IS THIS NOVEL ABOUT? back
- A: The River of Strange People is an historical mystery set in Belize and London, linking modern medical efforts to conquer death with past explorers’ quests for the fountain of youth. It’s also a literate page-turner which brings to life, in the minds of modern characters, the lost worlds of conquistadors and pirates and explorers.
- Q: WHAT DOES THE TITLE REFER TO? back
- A: Most of the novel takes place at the Maya ruins at Lamanai in Belize. The Maya call the river that leads to Lamanai ‘The River of Strange People’, because of all the strange Europeans who’ve come up this river the past 500 years, seeking gold and mahogany and the fountain of youth – and displacing the Maya in the process.
- Q: IS THE MEDICAL INFORMATION IN THE NOVEL TRUE – ABOUT MODERN DOCTORS CLOSING IN ON INVENTING DRUGS TO MAKE US ALL IMMORTAL? back
- A: Yes. Ask a doctor why people grow old and die, you get one of three answers:
- Inflammation, which erodes the plasticity of our cells and tissues all through our lives, as part of the process by which our immune system resists disease; so the theory is, if we could reduce inflammation without succumbing to disease, we might well live forever.
- Genes, the theory here being if we could identify and alter the human genes responsible for aging – as researchers have already done for simpler organisms, such as worms – we’d live at least six times as long as now; or
- Telomerase, which is the view espoused by Dr. Phelps in The River of Strange People: that the key to immortality lies in the behavior of cancer cells, which use the enzyme ‘telomerase’ to endlessly repair worn-out cells – so if we could just learn to activate the telomerase in our somatic cells (our ‘good’ cells), while de-activating it in cancer cells, we’d live forever.
- IS THE HISTORY IN THE NOVEL ACCURATE? back
- A: Yes, although the characters in the novel are fictional. But the Spanish did burn all but four of the ancient Maya codices in 1562, and did torture Maya shamans with the infamous strappado, as depicted in the book. And in later centuries, the pirates did haunt Ambergris Caye off the coast of Belize, because the Caye’s shallow waters and deep foliage made ideal hide-outs. While the pirate trips to Lamanai seeking the fountain of youth are fictional, it is true that many Europeans over the centuries sought the fountain of youth in the Maya homelands.
- Q: WHY IS YOUR FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH IN BELIZE INSTEAD OF FLORIDA? back
- A: During the 16th century, there were persistent rumors that the Maya (who occupied what’s now Belize and Guatemala, as well as southeast Mexico) had discovered the fountain of youth, but were hiding it from the Spanish. These rumors were never proved – but they were never disproved, either. By contrast, the story that the fountain of youth was in Florida has been proven to be a total fabrication.
- Q: WHAT ABOUT PONCE DE LEON? back
- A: Ponce de Leon went to Florida seeking what all the conquistadors sought: slaves and gold. He was never looking for the fountain of youth.
- Q: WHY’D WE ALL LEARN ABOUT PONCE DE LEON IN SCHOOL? back
- A: Because “history is a lie perpetrated by the living on the dead.” Ponce de Leon wrote a long report about Florida that contains not a single word about the fountain of youth. But the Queen of Spain was too lazy to read a long report, so she got a minister to write a summary. The minister hated de Leon, so he falsely wrote that de Leon had wasted the Queen’s resources in a vain search for the fountain of youth. In later centuries, lazy historians relied on the minister’s false summary, until a modern historian finally bothered to read Ponce’s actual report, and corrected the old error.
- Q: DOES YOUR NOVEL ADDRESS THE UNRELIABILITY OF HISTORY? back
- A: Yes. In The River of Strange People the reader receives historical data the same way we receive it in real life: from old news articles and court judgments, from fragmentary birth and death and property tax records, and from unreliable first-person narratives. Then the reader, like the characters in the novel, has to sift through the data and decide what s/he believes is ‘true’ and what is ‘false’.
- Q: HOW ARE THE MAYA PORTRAYED IN THE NOVEL? back
- A: I followed Kate Grenville’s advice, who said – and I’m paraphrasing – that she doubts any white writer from an industrialized country can understand native peoples with sufficient depth to make them fully-rounded characters in a novel, so she tries to show the Australian aborigines in her novels from a respectful distance. Similarly, I tried to show the Maya characters in The River of Strange People as shadowy figures, the way almost all whites see them – through a glass darkly, if you will. But at the same time, I thoroughly researched the history, culture and religious practices of both ancient and modern Maya, in the hope that my depiction of the Maya would be as fair and accurate as I could make it.
- Q: WHO TRANSLATED THE CHAUCER POEM IN THE PREFACE? back
- A: I did. I called it a ‘loose translation’ because it’s not a line-by-line translation of Chaucer; but the poem is based on the plot and language of The Pardoner’s Tale.
- Q: WHAT LINKS THE PARDONER’S TALE TO THE RIVER OF STRANGE PEOPLE? back
- A: The Pardoner’s Tale is the story of three fools who set out to find Death, in order to kill him; but they get distracted by a chest of gold which, unbeknownst to them, Death placed in their path. Greed drives two of them to stab the third; and when these two drink to celebrate their newly-increased share of the gold, they die from poison which the third man placed in their drinks before they stabbed him. So in the end, the three fools who set out to find Death do, indeed, find death.
Modern doctors, like Clive Phelps in The River of Strange People, who seek to ‘conquer death’, whether by reducing inflammation or altering genes or activating telomerase, remind me of Chaucer’s three fools. Up the path of knowledge the doctors rush, chasing death – sometimes distracted by the fame and fortune they’ll win if they can conquer death – but with little apparent thought about whether conquering death would really be a good thing for humanity. - Q: WHY WOULDN’T CONQUERING DEATH BE A GOOD THING FOR HUMANITY? back
- A: Well for starters, if we all lived forever, soon we couldn’t have children – our planet couldn’t sustain new lives, if the old lives never stepped aside to make room.
And what would give life any sense of urgency? Why push yourself to finish any project, when you could just as easily finish it a few centuries from now?
Most fundamentally, isn’t death what gives life meaning? Without death at our backs, I fear we’d all end up as bored with life as teenagers (who are the one class of people who already think they’re immortal).
Having said that, though, I must admit: if doctors do come up with anti-aging pills, before it’s too late for me, I’ll probably be standing in line with everyone else to buy them. The life force runs too strong for any of us to resist an immortality drug. Which is why I believe we ought to think through where the science is taking us, before it just takes us there. Like the atomic bomb, once the immortality genie’s out of the bottle, no one’s ever going to be able to put it back.