REVIEWS A young reporter embarks on a dangerous adventure in Salak's gripping debut novel, a blend of Heart of Darkness and Tomb Raider. Like her protagonist, Marika Vecera, award-winning journalist Salak has traveled solo--and narrowly escaped death--in the world's most remote and terrifying places, including war-torn Congo and the interior of Papua New Guinea. Marika, an ambitious journalist, travels to discover the truth about war correspondent Robert Lewis, who has observed some of the modern world's greatest atrocities. He is believed to have committed suicide, but a letter from a missionary leaves Marika thinking he may still be alive in the wilds of Papua New Guinea. She sets off on her quest, and eventually malaria, ritual murder and arduous trekking through the wilderness lead Marika to some startling discoveries and a pathway out of her own past trauma. While the book can be harrowing (the graphic descriptions of torture are sobering and hard to put out of mind), it offers Marika a redemptive optimism in the face of the worst humanity has to offer. (Aug.) --Publishers Weekly Pick-of-the-Week "With The White Mary, journalist Kira Salak makes a stunning debut as a novelist. This is a story whose beauty and power sweeps you along, like the jungle rivers that bear her heroine into the heart of New Guinea in search of a vanished American. In the tradition of Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim and Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter, The White Mary is a superb adventure tale that explores the human soul, a tale of a physical journey that frames a spiritual quest for love and meaning in a world sadly deficient in both." --Philip Caputo

Novels about difficult journeys often rank among the most compelling literature. They take us out of our everyday lives and show people at their best - and worst - as they struggle against nature, one another and themselves.

In "The White Mary," her remarkable debut novel, journalist Kira Salak ups the ante by placing her heroine, Marika Vecera, in the jungles of Papua New Guinea, with no one but her guide, Tobo. Early on, they are robbed of their canoe and all their supplies. They must trek through unbearably hot jungles and wade through swamps, eat tough cassowary birds and drink black water, all while avoiding crocodiles and battling swarms of malaria-infested mosquitoes.

Marika, a reporter who has recently survived an attempted rape in the Congo, is known to tribespeople as the White Mary, their name for any of the few white women they have seen so deep in the jungle. Even Tobo, the shaman who is guiding her only to repay a debt to the spirits, warns: "It is too far and difficult for you. If you go, you will die."

But Marika has a compelling reason to be in the jungle. She is searching for famed war reporter Robert Lewis, who supposedly committed suicide after a trip to cover the insurrection in East Timor. Although she'd never known him, Lewis was a beacon for Marika, a symbol of the selfless type of reporting she aspired to do. After her harrowing stint in the Congo, she had decided to give up her travels to write his biography.

When Marika discovers Lewis may have faked his suicide and settled in the most remote area of New Guinea, she becomes a modern-day Stanley, in search of her Livingstone.

Salak, who has traversed New Guinea herself, has written much more than an adventure story. Skillfully, she uses the genre to explore a complex range of human behavior and fervor, from cruelty and rage to the most unexpected kindness. She is not afraid of the biggest emotions, which she handles with a deft and assured touch.

There aren't many books that we hand to friends, urging, "You have to read this." "The White Mary" is one of them.

"One cannot write well about people risking their lives without having done it oneself; suffice it to say that Kira Salak is profoundly convincing on the topic. Salak's got it: That ability to capture the world in all its beauty and darkness and violence without romanticizing it. This is a book borne of the years that Salak spent as a journalist and traveler in some of the most terrifying places in the world, but she has held on to her basic humanity through it all. That essential humanity is what elevates The White Mary--and all of Salak's work--from mere 'adventure writing' to true literature. The reader is changed by it--changed in the same way Salak must have been, many times over, in the writing of it. This is a truly inspiring book about the kind of place I have spent many years reporting from. There is no doubt: She nailed it."

BUY "THE WHITE MARY"

Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Incorporated
Pub. Date: August 05, 2008
ISBN-13: 9780805088472
368pp Unabridged Hardcover First Edition

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See Photos of Kira Salak in Papua New Guinea

See Kira Salaks's Photos of the War in Congo

Kira Salak's National Geographic Video Interview

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