Showing results for "Spirit" in Contemporary Fiction

A sleek high-speed train glides silently through the French countryside, bearing Michael, an Australian writer, and his travelling world of memory and speculation. Melbourne, 1946, calls to him: the pressure cooker of the city during World War II has produced a small creative miracle, and at this pivotal moment the lives of his newly married parents, a group of restless artists, a proud old woman with a tent for a home, a journalist, a gallery owner, a farmer and a factory developer irrevocably intersect.

When Jenny, a graduate student in ornithology, is assigned to a birding project in a remote area of Panama, she is given one directive by her superior: Don't piss anyone off. Almost immediately, this proves difficult, for the study site is located near an indigenous village. At first, Jenny finds the Kuna people to be a prickly lot, quick to take offense. But as the weeks pass, she becomes better acquainted with the natives, including Pedro, a man cynical and detached from his own culture.