Book Review: British author makes home in Brazilian rainforest

Michael Astor, Associated Press Writer

Title: Where the Road Ends: A Home in the Brazilian Rainforest

Written by: Binka Le Breton

On her first night in her new home, Binka Le Breton already is full of doubt about the wisdom of picking up stakes and setting them down squarely in the heart of Brazil's Atlantic rainforest.

"What are you doing here, Binka?" she asks herself from the warmth of her sleeping bag as a violent rainstorm reveals a leaky roof. "How are you going to make out, stuck at the end of a long muddy road with no electricity, no plumbing, no telephone and nobody to talk to?"

Quite well, actually, it turns out.

But it is a long, bumpy road to get there, and Where the Road Ends details every pothole and pit stop along the way, of which there are many, both literal and metaphorical.

As a former concert pianist born in Britain and transplanted to Washington, Le Breton would seem out of her element deep in the woods: The arrival of her grand piano could be a scene out of Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, a movie about hauling a steamship over a steep swathe of Amazon jungle.

Her husband, Robin, is an agricultural economist, and their travels around the world have given her a head start on the language, Portuguese.

While Robin's experience with Third-World farming comes in handy, it also has him flying off on consulting jobs and often leaving Le Breton alone with a few local farmhands to run things.

Loneliness turns out to be a greater hardship than the lack of most modern conveniences.

Although she eventually finds a former US Peace Corps worker gone native to provide some company, Le Breton is on a different socio-cultural planet than her neighbours.

changes

Le Breton's arrival in 1989 coincides roughly with Brazil's economic transformation, which began after the currency stabilised in the mid-1990s, so the improvements she witnesses in the little town of Limeira often mirror the larger changes around the country as a whole.

Her husband's stubborn insistence on bringing a telephone to their remote farm is both a lesson in the labyrinthine nature of Brazilian bureaucracy and the physical difficulties of bringing the modern world kicking and screaming to a region that has changed little since the 19th century. It also provides yet another Fitzcarraldo moment.

A chapter called 'Oxcarts and the Internet' nicely details how both of them are now necessary tools for Le Breton, who went on to write several books on another rain forest, the Amazon.

Early on, Le Breton vows to stay out of local politics but when lies threaten to steal an election, she feels compelled to deliver a public lecture on the democratic process.

In doing so, she scores a win for the good guys, but earns herself the enmity of some local bosses as well as a nonlethal visit from a local 'pistoleiro'.

The book is somewhat vulnerable to the kind of white saviour criticism levelled at James Cameron's Avatar, but few people throw in their lot with another culture the way Le Breton has, and if others can benefit from her cultural baggage, she certainly seems to have more than enough to go around.