Chasing Mayan Dreams

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Explorers search for a lost Mayan city-and love-in this lush romantic adventure. Recently sprung from a Nazi concentration camp, Swiss photojournalist Erika Boeshure lands in southern Mexico to cover a wilderness expedition led by Claus Boehm, a charismatic but washed-up archaeologist hunting for the legendary Mayan capital of Menche. Claus may be an alcoholic has-been, but the smitten Erika senses a thriving rain forest in his soul and finances his shoestring project out of her advance. A grueling, vividly-described trek ensues, as Claus, Erika and their Mexican mule-drivers cope with incessant rains, stinging gnats, dwindling food and a giant boa who beds down with Erika, trailed all the while by Claus's nasty rival Barnes, who thinks the rain forest would make a fine cattle ranch. Things turn weird when Claus and Erika encounter the Lacandon Indians, an aboriginal forest tribe considered bloodthirsty savages by settled Mexicans. The Lacandons do try to sacrifice Erika, but once that misunderstanding is cleared up they prove a peaceable people with an entrancing culture that draws no distinction between dreaming and waking reality. Fueled by sacred balché liquor, their dreams offer insights both ineffable (macaws signify approaching death) and practical (opossums signify approaching diarrhea) and provide Claus with invaluable clues to Menches location. The jungle breeds melodrama as well as mysticism: The Lacandon chief's son is carrying on an incestuous affair with his half-sister, and the erotic attraction between Erika and Claus develops in prose as ripe as a mushy tropical fruit. ("The bulging head of the flesh-flower slid deeper into the cave of her passion.") Like the setting, Cantwell's writing is sometimes overheated and humid, but he packs the story with intriguing ethnographic lore and paints an evocative portrait, by turns oppressive and ravishing, of the rain forest and its denizens. A blend of Carlos Castaneda, Indiana Jones, Under the Volcano and soft-core schmaltz that makes for a diverting read.-Kirkus Discoveries