The Mapmaker's Wife: A True Tale of Love, Murder, and Survival in the Amazon

The Mapmaker's Wife: A True Tale of Love, Murder, and Survival in the Amazon
Author(s): Robert Whitaker
Publisher: Delta
Publication Date: 2004-12-28
Pages: 353
Binding: Paperback
List Price: $13.00
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    Product Description

    A True Tale of Love, Murder, and Survival in the Amazon

    The year is 1735. A decade-long expedition to South America is launched by a team of French scientists racing to measure the circumference of the earth and to reveal the mysteries of a little-known continent to a world hungry for discovery and knowledge. From this extraordinary journey arose an unlikely love between one scientist and a beautiful Peruvian noblewoman. Victims of a tangled web of international politics, Jean Godin and Isabel Gramesón’s destiny would ultimately unfold in the Amazon’s unforgiving jungles, and it would be Isabel’s quest to reunite with Jean after a calamitous twenty-year separation that would capture the imagination of all of eighteenth-century Europe. A remarkable testament to human endurance, female resourcefulness, and enduring love, Isabel Gramesón’s survival remains unprecedented in the annals of Amazon exploration.

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    Customer Reviews

    Fantastic Story of Science, Adventure and Math

    This is my favorite book that I've read this year, inspiring and fascinating. Others have summarized it well, so I simply want to say that it's a wonderful adventure.

    An Intriguing Tale

    "The Mapmaker's Wife" by Robert Whitaker lives up to its intriguing subtitle, "A True Tale of Love, Murder, and Survival in the Amazon."

    Covering a span of four decades in the middle of the eighteenth century and based on documents and letters written at the time and a wealth of secondary sources, the book tells the story of a decade-long expedition to South America launched in 1735 by a team of French scientists hoping to measure accurately a degree of latitude at the equator. Their aim was to calculate the circumference of the earth and resolve the continuing debate over its shape. Was it flattened at the poles as followers of Isaac Newton believed, or was it prolonged at the poles, like a double-ended pear, as those who subscribed to the theories of René Descartes believed?

    Thus the team of ten Frenchmen, three noted scientists and their seven assistants traveled across the Atlantic Ocean to Cartagena in the Vice-royalty of Peru. There they were joined by two young Spanish military officers - at the insistence of the Spanish king - and together, and sometimes individually, they traveled along tropical rivers and the crests of the Andes, reaching Quito, just over a year after setting out, to begin their task on June 4, 1736.

    Whitaker provides useful digressions on the nature of science, on Spanish and colonial history and attitudes, and introduces the reader to Isabel Gramesón, "A Daughter of Peru," and her family. Isabel provides the love interest and adds a final incredible tale of adventure to this wide-ranging story.

    The sheer magnitude of their task, the dangers of travel in wild uncharted terrain, the tangles of international politics, and the murder of one of their team by an angry mob keep the reader glued to the pages. A marriage, a separation of twenty years, and a final incredible journey along the wild and hostile Amazon River bring the book to its conclusion as most of the adventurers return to their places of origin, the last of them in 1773, thirty-eight years after setting out.

    "The Mapmaker's Wife" is a breathtaking adventure, a gripping human drama, and an enlightening glimpse into the history, the science, the culture and customs of a fascinating bygone age.

    Doesn't live up to expectations

    I enjoyed The Mapmaker's Wife, but felt that it was more a history book about the region than the romantic story it claimed to be. Therefore I was disappointed with it. I hoped to read it for recreation, but ended up feeling I was back in school.
    Diana Banat

    An entrancing tale

    Combine the quest for scientific advancement with exploration, adventure, human empathy, a gutsy survival storyline and you have a captivating read. The author has done just that.

    Along with the accomplished scientist Charles-Marie de La Condamine, Jean Godin was a member of the mid-1730's French expedition to Ecuador for evaluating earth's physical attributes. Their mission was to put an end to the century's old debate on earth's circumference, gravity pulls and longitudinal measurements. Little did they know that these scientific observations were to occupy ten years of their lives. For Godin, many more years of frustration were to be had in South America.

    Early in the expedition Godin met and ten years later married Isabel Grameson. Due to the political bureaucratic strife of the day, the two were separated for twenty years. He in French Guiana, her in Ecuador. Isabel's risky venture from the Andes into the unforgiving jungles of the Amazon to rejoin Godin is an unbelievable story of survival and human fortitude.

    I have come across references of this somewhat mythical and legendary narrative in other South American exploration literature. Mr. Whitaker's account is a page turner of what occurred two and a half centuries ago.

    Engaging and Disturbing

    I took this book with me when I headed down to Brazil to explore the Amazon Basin. Caveat: reading this book before heading down to Brazil to explore the Amazon is like going to see the movie "Jaws" before you go on your first scuba dive. Disturbing.

    Whitaker's description of Isabel Godin-Grameson's horrific ordeal of being lost in the Amazon is mind-boggling, to say the least. It was not the poisonous snakes, the crushing boa constrictors, jaguars, caimans, electric eels or the fierce head shrinking Jabaros that were the worst. It was the thousands of insect bites (giant ants, fire ants, wasps, bees, chiggers, assassin bug, mosquitoes, botflies and their eggs) which turned into open, oozing, festering sores, hundreds of sores on their faces, arms, legs or any exposed flesh. Whitaker's writes. "They had no mosquito nets, no tents - only the clothes they were wearing. It was futile. The insects feasted on them. They would huddle together in the blackness (of night) and hoards of ants would begin their onslaught, crawling over them, under their pants and over every inch of exposed skin. During these awful days, they were plagued with botfly eggs. When the mosquitoes, laden with botfly eggs, feed on the body, the heat from the host causes the eggs to hatch. Immediately, the larvae burrow beneath the skin. The botfly maggot has two anal hooks that anchor firmly in the flesh and there it grows for more than a month . . . They were taking their turn as food for the botflies, even as they were slowly starving to death." Whitaker captures the horror of their situation.

    There is much more than Isabel's gripping journey that makes this a great read: the scientific expedition to determine the size and shape of the earth, the descriptions of the culture of 18th century Europe and South America, the tragic treatment of the slaves (African and Indigenous Americans), the dedication, the love and the will to survive. This is a must read for any student of South America, Cartography or Life. Highly recommended. Buy Me »
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