Where the Road Ends: A Home in the Brazilian Rainforest

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About Where The Road Ends: A Home In The Brazilian

Product Description The colorful story of one couple's journey across the world to build their dream home in the heart of the Amazon In 1989, as their mid-life crises approached, concert pianist Binka Le Breton and her husband Robin, an agricultural economist, decided to uproot themselves from their home in Washington, D.C. and start a new life in Brazil. Where the Road Ends is their story of building a house, a rainforest research center, and a new dream. Since then, they've learned how to work with the trees, the animals, the weather, the local community, and each other. Their technology now ranges from the oxcart to the Internet, and in 2000 they opened a rainforest conservation and research center that is visited by foreign researchers and Brazilian school children. From meeting their resident cowboy, Albertinho, to beheading snakes, to chauffeuring a local wedding―the adventures described here are unparalleled. This delightful memoir takes the armchair traveler deep into another world where matters of providing food and shelter can never be taken for granted. Binka and Robin have embarked on an adventure that many readers only dream about―transplanting themselves in a different country and learning (often the hard way) what it takes to survive and flourish. "A good read for armchair travelers." - Kirkus Reviews From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. This book reveals all the enchantment of the rainforest, as well as its mysteries and dangers. The author and her agricultural economist husband moved to Brazil twenty years ago to take over an abandoned farm in a beautiful but remote locale. Le Breton's story the challenges and joys they faced adapting to the community and working to realize their dream of bringing environmental awakening to the region through the establishment of the Iracambi Rainforest Research Center. Her tale has everything, from bandits to insane elections to horribly delayed projects to the artificial insemination of the cows. The cast of characters, colorful in the extreme, includes a squatter cowboy who can fix almost anything, neighbors involved in vendettas, homeless bridegrooms, and women who take sewing seminars in the farmhouse kitchen hoping to make money from the new skills, in spite of the prevailing attitude that a woman's place was in the home. In spite of myriad setbacks, there is tremendous goodwill. "Most Brazilians spent their salary the day they received it, and most shopkeepers put up their prices accordingly. If you were quick off the mark you might find an item in the supermarket going at last week's price, but the supermarket staff tended to be quicker than you were." Le Breton's can-do attitude and successful gerry-rigging makes her an entertaining MacGyver of the jungle. From Booklist The author of titles concerning preservation of Brazilian forests (The Greatest Gift: The Courageous Life and Martyrdom of Sister Dorothy Stang, 2008), Le Breton, prior to her writing career, lived as a global itinerant with a husband on call to his occupation as an international economist. In 1989 they chucked everything and moved to a dilapidated farm in Brazil, and this is Le Breton's candid account of adapting to country living, tropical style. Ambivalent about the project, which was more her husband's brainchild than her own, Le Breton indicates there was an emotional toll in dispensing with electricity, plumbing, telephones, and passable roads, and in trying to connect with her new neighbors. Establishing infrastructure and friendships becomes the narrative, concentrated on Le Breton's initial years in Brazil. This is ultimately a triumphant story, as restoring the farm emboldens Le Breton and her reform-minded husband to shake the local Brazilians out of a perceived political and economic apathy; an election campaign climaxes Le Breton's honest chronicle, which will energize repudiators of the rat race and embracers of environmentalism. --Gilbert Taylor About the Author Binka Le