The Mapmaker's Wife

At the heart of this sweeping tale of adventure, discovery and exploration is one woman's extraordinary journey, inspired by her love for a man she had not seen in 20 years. In 1769, Isabel Grameson - an upper-class Peruvian woman who had lived all her life close to home - set out across the Andes, and down the length of the Amazon in order to rejoin her husband in French Guiana. Her 3,000-mile trek through untamed wilderness was one that no woman (and few men) had made before.
Isabel's story unfolds against the first scientific expedition to the New World, which began in 1735, when a team of French mapmakers set out to answer the great scientific question of the day: What was the precise size and shape of the Earth?
Like Lewis and Clark's exploration of the American West, their incredible mission, which took the better part of ten years, revealed the mysteries of a little known continent to a world hungry for knowledge. The mapmakers recorded new plant and animal species and documented, for the first time, the brutal treatment of the native populations by Spanish and Portuguese colonists. Scaling the Peruvian Andes, they also faced untold danger - wild cats, voracious insects, poisonous snakes, vampire bats - while madness, disease, and death took their toll. However, one of the expedition members - the youngest, Jean Godin - fell in love with Isabel and in 1741, they were married.
As the expedition drew to a close, Jean planned to bring his wife and young family back to France. To ensure the way was open and safe, he traveled ahead, alone. But when he reached French Guiana, disaster struck, and he and Isabel found themselves stranded on opposite ends of the continent, victims of a tangled web of international politics.
Drawing on the original writings of the French mapmakers and Peruvian authorities, as well as his own retracing of Isabel's epic trek, Robert Whitaker weaves a tale rich in history, scientific achievement and romance.