A Midwestern American woman and her Colombian husband living on a remote farm in his homeland flee for their lives when civil war encroaches.
Through the eyes of a small town Midwestern American, this memoir describes how a pristine remote area of Colombia was invaded by war and social change. Kathryn Arango and her husband homesteaded for years in his native land among jaguars and anacondas, with no running water or electricity, amidst a culture of subsistence farmers and cowboys, superstitions and magic, until the innocence of their isolated paradise was lost and the country whirled into chaos brought on by the insatiable appetite for cocaine coming from abroad and the money it generated. With violence between the Colombian army, drug cartels, paramilitary groups, and the FARC guerrilla escalating all around them, the couple was compelled to abandon first their farm, then the country, leaving behind murdered family and friends.
Interspersed with excerpts from letters Kathryn sent back to family in Ohio which gave (sometimes false) assurances about life in Colombia, this story has all the elements of a fascinating novel—adventure, danger, love—except—it really happened.