When Edward Gibbon Swann, a Cambridge naturalist, sails up the Amazon in the 1850s to map uncharted territory, he expects adventure and discovery. What he does not expect is Bonita — or the corrupt official who will use her existence to destroy him.
Thrown into a jungle prison by a petty Brazilian delegado, stripped of his schooner and his instruments, Swann finds an unlikely companion in a French cartographer who has also sacrificed everything for love. Together they navigate a world where the law belongs to those who pay for it, and where passion and respectability cannot coexist.
Back in London, Swann rebuilds his life — a fellowship, a respectable marriage, a career in finance. But a daughter is growing up on a Scottish island, unacknowledged. And the Amazon never quite lets go.
Love and Loss in the Amazon is a novel about the choices we make when all choices are wrong, about the loves we carry in silence, and about what remains when the river has worn everything else smooth. Inspired by real correspondence found in the British public archives, Alfredo Behrens has transformed a forgotten colonial grievance into a story of rare emotional depth.