Abruptly expelled from his farm in Ecuador at the age of sixty-two, Moritz Thomsen indulges in that saddest of pleasures - travel - taking a trip to Brazil and ultimately a journey up the great Amazon River by boat. Assaulted by ghosts and memories at every turn, as his journey unfolds he reexamines his life to understand how he came to be living a life of self-imposed poverty and hardship. Outwardly he sails up the Amazon towards Manaus, giving us poignant and limpid descriptions of the river, yet inwardly a shattering romantic symphony rages, running from the depths of human misery to life's small but exquisite transcendent pleasures. He spares the reader nothing.