A Guest in the Jungle

When Pittsburgh attorney Whitehill begins his vacation, he is anticipating a leisurely jaunt across South America. But he gets more than he bargained for when a sightseeing trip goes awry, leaving him stranded in the heart of the Amazon jungle. Whitehill isn’t exactly the outdoorsy type—he hikes in Brooks Brothers pants—so he is relieved when he meets a scientist perusing the jungle for medicinal plants and insects. Of course, the good doctor’s true motives are less than altruistic, and Whitehill soon finds himself being forcibly marched through the rainforest en route to certain death. When he escapes, with the help of some hungry vampire bats, Whitehill falls in with an English-speaking Indian whose tribe is at the heart of a raging land conflict. Trapped in the jungle, Whitehill must gather what little courage he has to stop an Indian war and preserve a vanishing culture from rapacious developers. Along the way, he has a fling with a gorgeous native, narrowly survives being sacrificed to the gods, and is rescued from a bombing by a pair of hard-drinking American expats. A Guest in the Jungle is a smart, engrossing, and uproariously funny novel about the power of one man to make a difference in the world.

About the Author :
James Polster is a novelist, journalist, and movie producer who earned graduate degrees from Harvard University and Columbia University. A National Fellow of the Explorers Club, he has traveled the world profiling international luminaries such as Indira Gandhi and Donald Trump and covering such major athletic events as the Duran/Leonard Superfight and the World Championships of Elephant Polo. In addition to A Guest in the Jungle, which helped focus a spotlight on the disappearing Amazon rainforest, he is the author of The Graduate Student and Brown, which was named by Publishers Weekly as a Best Book of the Year.

Review :
“An action-packed comedy with blazing insights into life strewn along the trail.” —Cleveland Plain Dealer “Daring, witty, and intelligently written. With this novel, James Polster moves to the cutting edge of a new crop of young, talented West Coast writers.” —San Francisco Review of Books “A thriller that is both frightening and funny—Polster’s impressive ability to evoke the jungle in all its perilous beauty gives the reader a real sense of being there.” —Los Angeles Daily News “The diversity of life, both wild and human, is incredible, but a very hard reality comes through—the big reality, the big question.” —NPR “I stayed up late and got up early and still had to be a couple of hours late to work in order to finish- outperforms the highest expectations—a Must Read Book.” —New Orleans Magazine “Polster fits somewhere between Hiassen and Vonnegut.” —Publishers Weekly “Hilarious and unpredictable. Best of all, a clear message about the evils of tropical rainforest destruction—a wonderful book and highly recommended.” —World Rainforest Report “A real life Indiana Jones.” —WWL TV, New Orleans “Polster’s book is so engrossing, unpretentious- and uproariously funny- that the reader may not recognize at first how poetically written and beautifully crafted it is…You can’t put this book down. If you try, it will follow you through every room in the house.” —Bob Scher, The South American Explorer “Consistently smart…Convincingly exotic.” —The New York Times “Polster practices the humorist’s craft with a bold, sure hand that recalls Mark Twain.” —Kirkus Reviews “James Polster’s novel is a high-speed jungle chase, a slambanger with never a dull sentence. The book provides more honest pleasure than a day at the movies- and I’m including buttered popcorn and a large soda in that claim. Whitehill is an irresistible hero: modest and joking even while he’s escaping from the seamiest, oiliest, baddest of bad guys. The pages fly, the world goes away. There is some magic in this writing.” —James Robison, author of Rumor