A Saint Among Savages

London: Collins. Very Good/Very Good. 1980. Hard Back. 8vo 0002167409 Dust jacket complete, unclipped. Original cloth boards with bright gilt titling on spine. No ownership marks. Colour photographs. 183 pages clean and tight. There are still some mysteries left in this world. Still a few remaining secret places, still a few remote people about whom practically nothing is known, and some strange facts that give reason to reflect in this modern, hardened civilization. This book is about some of these mysteries. The place is the Amazon jungle of Eastern Ecuador; the people are the Auca Indians - possibly the most dangerous tribe in the world; and the astonishing . fact is how Rachel Saint could have lived for twenty years amongst them, a lone white woman in a savage environment. Rachel Saint is a missionary - but this book tells far more than the story of a missionary doing her work; it tells of a truly remarkable woman who had a vision at seventeen and the faith to follow that dream against all odds. It is also about the primitive tribe who grew to love her until they said: `She is our sister - this is her home.' It tells the story of great courage in the face of terrifying danger. Until one has been face to face with spears raised in anger against you and known that similar spears, wielded by these very same men had impaled your own brother, one cannot appreciate what real courage is. Rachel Saint has that kind of courage. She knew that these people had killed her brother and his four companions. She knew that no one - neither white man nor Indian - had ever made peaceful contact with them in their whole violent history. She knew that they had so little regard for life that they killed their own wives and children on a casual whim - but she went fearlessly to live with them and taught them two of the most valuable lessons needed today: the meaning of love and how to live in peace. Compared with this achievement, criticism and controversy relating to the work of missionaries, of anthropologists, of government policy, lose importance. A missionary fulfils a duty as he or she sees it; this is not necessarily approved of by others, and this book seeks to explore all points of view impartially: to see the wrong that each side does as well as the good - the positive aspects as well as the negative, without bias, without whitewash. An equally important character in the story is Dayuma, the Auca woman who became Rachel Saint's closest friend. In another period of history, in another culture, perhaps she would have been a saint - she radiates humility, grace and humour. And finally, bringing the different strands of the story together, is Sam, Dayuma's son. He is a classic example of a universal young man. Born to a primitive Indian, but educated in the United States, he is the successful amalgam of two diametrically opposed cultures - in his kind of language, he is a very together person. Rachel Saint - Dayuma - Sam. Surely it is remarkable to find three such unique people in the pages of one book, and, even more unusual, to trace the mysterious way in which events conspired to bring them together. .