Guest in the Jungle, A

When Pittsburgh attorney Whitehill begins his vacation, he is anticipating a leisurely jaunt across South America. But he gets more than he bargained for when a sightseeing trip goes awry, leaving him stranded in the heart of the Amazon jungle. Whitehill isn’t exactly the outdoorsy type—he hikes in Brooks Brothers pants—so he is relieved when he meets a scientist perusing the jungle for medicinal plants and insects. Of course, the good doctor’s true motives are less than altruistic, and Whitehill soon finds himself being forcibly marched through the rainforest en route to certain death. When he escapes, with the help of some hungry vampire bats, Whitehill falls in with an English-speaking Indian whose tribe is at the heart of a raging land conflict. Trapped in the jungle, Whitehill must gather what little courage he has to stop an Indian war and preserve a vanishing culture from rapacious developers. Along the way, he has a fling with a gorgeous native, narrowly survives being sacrificed to the gods, and is rescued from a bombing by a pair of hard-drinking American expats. A Guest in the Jungle is a smart, engrossing, and uproariously funny novel about the power of one man to make a difference in the world.