Part mystery, part warts-and-all exploration diary, part mediation on the debilitating effects of depression, it's beautifully written and, despite its heart of darkness, great fun
Irish Times
A mystery in the Arthur Conan Doyle tradition, had Sherlock and Watson been masochistic enough to volunteer for this dreadful trek . . . Bayard gives us a compassionate, unsentimental portrait of a son who would forever live in the shadow of a colossal father
Washington Post
Bayard's heart-of-darkness saga is impressive-blood and sacrifice, primitive peoples and Roosevelt courage . . . [He] exactingly chronicles the hardships of charting the river, right down to the damp, dangers and drudgery of the Amazonian jungle . . . A suspense-filled reimagining of history deepened by a confrontation with evil's supernatural presence
Kirkus Reviews
Bayard has written a riveting thriller and psychological study wrapped around historical events and people and gives the reader a real existential puzzle to put together
Booklist
An edge-of-your-seat thriller with all the twists and turns of an unexplored river
Kermit Roosevelt III, great-great grandson of Theodore Roosevelt, and author of In the Shadow of the Law