Amazon Stranger; A Rainforest Chief Battles Big Oil

New York: Lyons & Burford, 1996. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Good. Oliver Williams (Map of Ecuador), Russell Kaye (Ja. v, [3], 215, [1] pages. Author's Note. Autographed copy sticker on front of DJ Signed by the author on the half-title page. DJ has some wear, soiling and is price clipped. One man obsessed with the Ecuadorian jungle and desperate to save it and its people chronicles the struggle of the Coffin people against Big Oil. Mike Tidwell is the founder and director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, a grassroots nonprofit organization dedicated to raising awareness about the impacts and solutions associated with global warming in Maryland, Virginia, Washington D.C., West Virginia, and nationwide. He is also an author and filmmaker who predicted in vivid detail the Katrina hurricane disaster in his 2003 book Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana's Cajun Coast. His most recent book, focusing on Katrina and global warming, is titled The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas, and the Race to Save America's Coastal Cities. His 2004 documentary film, We Are All Smith Islanders, vividly depicts the dangers of global warming in Maryland, Virginia, and D.C. Tidwell has been featured in numerous national media outlets including NBC's Meet the Press, NPR, the New York Times, the Baltimore Sun, Politico, and the Washington Post. In 2003, Tidwell received the Audubon Naturalist Society's prestigious Conservation Award. Two years later he received an honorary Doctorate of Letters from Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, Louisiana. Amazon Stranger: A Rainforest Chief Battles Big Oil relates Tidwell's stay in the Amazonian jungles of Ecuador. Here he finds the Coffin tribe, which is led, interestingly enough, by Randy Borman, the son of American missionaries who was born in the rain forest. The land and the tribe's way of life is threatened by the activities of local oil companies. Praising this depiction of the battle between industry, the environment, and native peoples in Amazon Stranger, a Publishers Weekly critic reported that Tidwell "paints a vivid picture of the rain forest and its people," and Alice Joyce called it a "deftly written book" in a Booklist review. Derived from a Kirkus review: From deep in the Ecuadoran rainforest, from the heart of the Coffin Indian lands, comes Tidwell's spirited firsthand report on the indigenous peoples' struggle to survive. Eastern Ecuador perhaps defines the notion of biodiversity, a natural habitat agog with every manner of creature, and the home of the Coffin Indians. It is also the resting place of petroleum products, which Texaco wished to exploit as far back as 1965 and which are now eyed covetously by the Texas-based Maxus oil group. Tidwell paid a visit to the rainforest to gauge the effects of ecotourism and fell for the place wholesale, rapt in the ``macaws and kapok trees, dolphins and sherbert butterflies.'' He was equally smitten by Randy Borman, son of white missionaries and now leader of the Zabalo Coffin, and his efforts to protect the diminished Coffin acreage from further assault by oil interests. But this is not just a David against Goliath story—though it is a blow-by-blow account of the canny Coffin challenge to forays by the government-controlled Petroecuador into their territory. It is also the sad tale of ruined Indian villages, where wildlife was out and oil spills were in. Amid all the mayhem caused by the oil companies, Tidwell treats readers to the episodic theater of the jungle, with one fantastic siting tripping over another. By turns wry, morose, upbeat, and blue, Tidwell writes with admirable restraint and with an appealing personal touch: He was always crushed when the quixotic Borman treated him brusquely. A tale with enough punch to turn a few heads and enough storytelling talent to keep the converted charmed.