Miriam Murcutt

"After her mother’s untimely death, the young Corin Dunbar is banished to live with her aunt Jessie, an obsessively religious spinster who runs a failing cattle ranch near a speck of a town called Paradox in southeast Utah. It’s the mid-1950s, and Corin hates her new life until the Big Five Hollywood studios arrive, lured by the fiery red-rock scenery that provides a perfect backdrop to the blockbuster Westerns they plan to film. Overnight, Paradox...

Authors Richard Starks and Miriam Murcutt recount the story of their travels on the river Casiquaire, a strange river that connects the Orinoco and the Amazon river systems by apparently flowing up and over the watershed that divides them. Along the way, they also explore the humorous and serious aspects of off-the-map travel including a brush with a tribe of Yanomami Indians and a confrontation with FARC guerillas.