An Amazon Village Faces Big Oil. A conflict could cost lives. It could also save the Earth.
Deep in Ecuador’s Amazon Basin, seismic waves rock the ground. A new road slices the rainforest. It rushes toward an Indigenous Kichwa village, threatening its land and its people. It is a tendril of oil exploration by corporate giants poised to suck the black gold from the Earth.
Oil spills. Rampant disease. Starving wildlife. Dying villagers. All are imminent. The Kichwa must either confront the oil drillers – or retreat further into the jungle as they did to escape the Spanish colonizers, the Rubber Barons, and the Covid pandemic. The silence of death creeps under the canopy signaling the demise of both their ancient culture and a primary life source for the planet.
The heart of the Kichwa village is one family. The mother is Sacha, emerging as a leader in this patriarchal community. Leading a conflict means facing obstacles set by her shamanic father, her two grown sons, and villagers quarreling between passive resistance or violent confrontation. Forest retreat might be easiest. To decide, villagers listen for messages from the spirit beings of the living forest. Messages they trust … messages they know the world needs to hear.
Outside the forest are friends and deadly foes: U.S. and Chinese oil companies, corrupt Ecuadorian government officials, well-meaning U.S. expatriates, two environmental activists fleeing arrest, a wise prostitute, and whip-wielding women defenders of the rainforest - a melee of action and inspiration.
Assessment:
Plot/Idea: Jaguar Dreams tells a hard-hitting story of environmental destruction and the attempts of one indigenous nation to protect their lands. By telling the story from multiple points of view, the author conveys the many interested parties who are affected or seek to benefit from land exploitation.
Prose: Despite moments of awkward phrasing, the prose is generally clear, straightforward, and capably drives the story.
Originality: Writing outside one's own cultural experiences can be fraught territory. Despite the novel's potentially problematic approach, the author has clearly studied the Kichwa people and the threats to their land; this insight provides a layer of richness to the storytelling.
Character/Execution: This is a sensitively written story that explores multiple perspectives on ongoing predation in the Amazon. Readers will likely be inspired to seek out more information about the Kichwa people.
Date Submitted: August 24, 2023
Well Worth the Read!
Reviewed in the United States on June 21, 2023
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The narrative activity that creates the fiction makes this novel well worth the read—above and beyond the important message that the story is designed to convey. Built almost entirely of dialogue and its immediate context, Jaguar Dreams preserves in its actual prose the cultural landscape that the characters are fighting to preserve. There is no 'Westernizing” of the story through narrative commentary and complex story lines. Instead, the dialogue creates both the context and the events. We are asked to appreciate the unvarnished stakes felt by these characters as they fight Big Oil for the preservation of the rainforest and for a ancestral way of life. We learn through the rhetoric what the stakes are and also, metafictionally, the limitations of that rhetoric in reaching through to the giant Capitalists machine with its own already fixed agenda. To an important extent the dialogue of the characters is designed to reach the reader of the story, more than the corporate figures perfunctorily asking for input from the indigenous peoples summoned for their input. The narrative structure of the dialogue and its immediate context consists mainly of short declarative sentences. In this way the narrator (and author) resists the temptation to influence and thereby westernize the message of the dialogue, The risk you take with this style is that the fiction can end up sounding more like didactic discourse, and the discussion the author wants to provoke by her narrative may be seen as restricted to what the author wants it to “say.” The book is so well researched, however, that the reader feels confident in the historical and cultural validity of the dialogue and what discussion it inherently provokes. I strongly recommend this book both for what it does and for the narrative risks it takes to convey story and message. It is also a very good read!
Susan MacBryde Has HIt Her Stride!
Reviewed in the United States on August 8, 2023
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The author of Jaguar Dreams is the real deal, with hands-on experience, bravely supporting the preservation of Indigenous Ecuadorian cultures and habitats. Her first book, the first in a series, is not only informative in describing how a rainforest the whole world depends on can be quickly dismantled by oil extraction, never to rise again, but it also shows the strategies that will succeed in preventing its devastation. Woven into a fictionalized account is an authentic portrayal of the players, including tribal leaders, governmental heads, international capitalists, legal teams, and committed ex-pats, patterned after MacBryde, who lend their expertise to make a difference by showing respect and remembering that the tribes must own their initiatives. Their very lives are at risk. If you’ve ever wondered what the big deal is, why the Living Forest holds the Rights of Nature, and how these rights dovetail with human rights to ensure our collective global well-being, the drama in Jaguar Dreams brings it home!
An Insightful look at the complex world of attempts to save the Amazon
Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2023
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Susan MacBryde has done a thorough job of showing all the players in the on-going struggle between the people who live in the Amazon , their supporters, and the corporate and governmental coalitions that want to remove the oil and minerals from the Amazon, resulting in its demise. Through the elaboration of the characters personalities and roles we come away with a feeling for the many pressures at play on each one. As a cultural anthropologist, I appreciate how the nuances of cultural perspectives are clearly presented. My bias is, of course, to support the peoples of the Amazon whose home is threatened by government approved contracts with corporations, legal and illegal. The injustices are more salient because Ecuador has several Constitutional provisions for the preservation of natural resources. The NGOs involvement shows the international support for preserving the Amazon for the insects, for all flora and fauna, providing for the future as the weather changes. I totally recommend this book for it elucidating insights and for its call to action. The Andes Amazon Conservancy is one non-profit active in this struggle.
The Struggle is Real
Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2023
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It's so true to life, it's scary. The author really did her homework, and the story reveals it. Gripping, authentic, thought provoking and best of all, enlightening. For anyone who truly cares what happening to our rainforests (not just Ecuador's) it's a great read.
A Gripping Story
Susan MacBryde tells a gripping story about the efforts of a Kichwa village in the Ecuadorian Amazon to defend their land against the illegal incursions of an international oil consortium. She introduces us to the many stakeholders involved including the Kichwa and Zapara forest peoples who have deep connections to their forest home, the environmental nonprofits who seek to partner with them, the international oil firms whose profit motive trumps any concern about the devastation their operations cause, and the various levels of the Ecuadorian government with its conflicting priorities of maximizing national revenue and ecological and cultural preservation. While this story is fictional, it clearly draws from real current events in the Ecuadorian Amazon. As a former CEO of an Ecuadorian environmental nonprofit, I can attest to the accuracy with which she depicts the challenges of starting up such an organization in Ecuador and the complexity of the issues involved. I particularly enjoyed her focus on the perspectives of the Kichwa and other forest peoples in this story. Indigenous peoples are the caretakers of a high percentage of the remaining intact biodiverse regions of the earth, and they must be at the center of efforts to protect that biodiversity going forward. Her research into and affection for the Kichwa and especially Kichwa women greatly benefit the novel. Finally, Jaguar Dreams is a cracking good tale. Engaging, courageous underdogs battling nefarious evil-doers in a great cause: what's not to like? A great read!
A Story of Our Time
Susan MacBryde's book is its own jaguar, a gripping guide between the visible lives and the hidden existential conflicts and cultures of Amazon tribal people and those who would rob them of their homes and their very survival. It is more than just a good read about this clash between traditional rights and modern world greed -- it is also a heart-warming story, based on knowledge and research, of today's threatened jungle communities.
Great Writing. Important Book
Wow, Not only is this a great read, it's also an important book. If you care at all about the environment and the future of Indigenous people, you need to read this book. Susan MacBryde paints pictures with words that puts you deep in the rainforests of Ecuador. The rainforest is in trouble and you can help. Start by reading this book. When does the movie come out???
