The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2009

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Preface-Chapter 5

Chapters 6-13

Chapters 14-17

Chapters 18-21

Chapters 22-25

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Preface-Chapter 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Preface Summary

The two-page preface finds Grann in the Xingu River region of the Amazon jungle, holding a map that features the letter Z in the middle, and explaining to the reader why he is there—or at least why he has convinced himself he is there. Grann had conducted extensive research into the decades-long quest for the lost City of Z, an ancient civilization purportedly hidden deep in the jungle. In the early 20th century, notwithstanding the environmental-determinist argument that the inhospitable jungle could not have sustained a complex ancient civilization, some explorers became obsessed with finding the city. Grann hints that a similar kind of obsession now drives him deeper into the Amazon.

Chapter 1 Summary: “We Shall Return”

Chapter 1 opens in January 1925. Percy Harrison Fawcett, a famed British explorer, is set to depart from Hoboken, NJ, and embark upon another journey into the Amazon. This time, he is searching for the lost City of Z. In nearly two decades of exploration, Fawcett has accumulated evidence pointing to the existence of an ancient civilization in that region. Now, having secured funding from American and British sources, he hopes to make the discovery of the century. He is wary of competition from other explorers, including the American multimillionaire Dr. Alexander Hamilton Rice, so Fawcett keeps his intended route a secret.

A veteran of many prior expeditions into the Amazon, Fawcett has learned that smaller parties stand a better chance of success. With this in mind, he will be accompanied only by his son Jack Fawcett and Jack’s best friend Raleigh Rimell, both in their early twenties. Though physically fit, neither young man has any experience as an explorer. Jack has the look of a movie star and the aspirations to match, but he also is determined to follow in his father’s footsteps. To that end, Jack had maintained a strict diet and exercise regimen to prepare for the expedition. Raleigh is a devoted friend to Jack, but he is more lighthearted and therefore much more at ease in the company of young women, one of whom catches his attention on the voyage to South America.

Chapter 2 Summary: “The Vanishing”

The narrative advances to June 1996, more than 70 years after the Fawcett expedition vanished. James Lynch, a 42-year-old employee of Chase Bank in Sao Paolo, Brazil, has become fascinated by the Fawcett story. Like many restless adventurers before him, Lynch now plans his own expedition into the Amazon, retracing Fawcett’s steps in hopes of unraveling the mystery. Lynch’s party of 17 includes James, Jr., his 16-year-old son. Equipped with GPS and other modern technology, the expedition sets out along Fawcett’s path. At one point, while using the GPS, Lynch notes that the expedition is close to Fawcett’s last known location. Proceeding by boat down the Xingu River, the Lynch party encounters Indigenous people—“naked, their ears pierced with dazzling macaw feathers” (27). They are members of the Kuikuro tribe. After being presented with gifts, the chief invites Lynch and his compatriots to camp near the Kuikuro village. The following morning, warriors from a neighboring tribe, alerted to their presence by the sound of a plane bringing more crew and supplies, descend on the encampment. Several members of the expedition escape by jumping back on the plane, but 12 others, including Lynch and his son, are taken captive.

Chapter 3 Summary: “The Search Begins”

Grann’s own quest begins in 2004. While conducting research for a related project, Grann had stumbled across references to Fawcett. Grann notes that he is a journalist, not an adventurer, yet throughout his career he has been drawn to stories of people consumed by obsession. Now, Grann is interested in both Fawcett’s story and the story of Z. Grann learns that archaeologists have long dismissed the possibility that a complex civilization could have thrived in the Amazon, but he also learns that revisionists are challenging this traditional assumption. Grann contacts Michael Heckenberger, a University of Florida archaeologist conducting research near the Kuikuro village where James Lynch and others were taken captive in 1996. Heckenberger agrees to meet with Grann if Grann can get to the village. Grann tells his wife Kyra that he plans his own foray into the Amazon. She replies: “I hope you know what you’re doing” (36).

Chapter 4 Summary: “Buried Treasure”

In 1888, Percy Harrison Fawcett is a 21-year-old British artillery officer stationed in Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka). Born to an aristocratic family with declining fortunes, Fawcett experienced a complicated upbringing, a mixture of privilege and deprivation. His education has molded him into a Victorian gentleman, albeit an uneasy and restless one. In Ceylon, Fawcett goes in search of rumored treasure buried at a place called Galla-pita-Galla. He finds no such treasure but is drawn to the chase. That same year, he meets Nina Agnes Paterson, daughter of an imperial official. Two years later, on October 29, 1890, they are engaged. Shaken by baseless innuendo regarding Nina’s character invented by disapproving family, Fawcett calls off the engagement, and Nina marries another man. Years later, following her husband’s death, Nina reconnects with Fawcett, and they are married on January 31, 1901.

Now in his thirties, Fawcett’s restlessness intensifies. He is drawn to the occult, in particular to the purported psychic Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Like his older brother Edward, an adventure novelist, Fawcett turns to Buddhism. Still stationed in Ceylon, Fawcett continues his forays into the jungle, where he finds ruins of the ancient city Anuradhapura. He now craves adventure. In hopes of changing his life’s trajectory and becoming a true gentleman-explorer, he decides to visit London’s Royal Geographical Society.

Chapter 5 Summary: “Blank Spots on the Map”

Grann visits the Royal Geographical Society in February 2005. He encounters skeptics who fear that he might be one of those “Fawcett freaks” (55). Grann describes maps on the wall of a society formed in 1830 for the purpose of mapping the world. Grann also describes some of the RGS’s most interesting Victorian-era characters, such as Richard Burton and Sir Francis Galton. Examining the RGS’s collection of Fawcett papers, Grann finds a 1915 letter from Fawcett to the RGS’s map curator Edward Ayearst Reeves, a 1921 letter in which Fawcett refers with certainty to a lost Amazonian civilization, and another letter indicating that Fawcett was no mere amateur. At the RGS, Fawcett had taken classes and been trained as an explorer.

Preface and Chapters 1-5 Analysis

The opening chapters serve several important functions. First, they establish the book’s narrative pattern. With few exceptions, Grann alternates between Fawcett’s story and his own. Chapter 2, which focuses on James Lynch, constitutes one such exception to the pattern. Otherwise, beginning with Chapter 4, most even-numbered chapters tell Fawcett’s story, and most odd-numbered chapters tell Grann’s story. Grann often overlaps the narrative so the events in his chapters place him in roughly the same location as Fawcett (or Lynch) at the end of the preceding chapter. This overlap helps the reader keep track of the potentially tangled trail the book describes and also helps create a transitional bridge between the two narratives.

On the thematic front, these early chapters do not highlight Fawcett’s obsession with Z, but they do feature hints as to the nature of that obsession and its costs to the people around him. Fawcett decides to explore the Amazon accompanied only by Jack and Raleigh, for instance, and he does this in part because his experience favors small expeditions over large ones. As the story unfolds, however, it becomes clear that Fawcett also chooses to explore with Jack and Raleigh in part because he has alienated many others along the way and thus has few options. Fawcett also struggles to secure funding for this expedition in part because the scientific establishment gives his ideas little credence and in part because his obsessive behavior has made him something of an outcast.

Other hidden costs appear as foreshadowing. On the journey to South America, for instance, Raleigh enjoys his status as a minor celebrity and is “soon flirting with a girl” (17). Later in the book, however, it becomes clear that Raleigh did more than flirt. In fact, he appears to have fallen in love with the girl, for on the expedition into the Amazon he talks only of getting out of the jungle and starting a family. He loses interest in Z. At one point, Fawcett sends the guides home and encourages Raleigh to go with them, but Raleigh continues, most likely for the same reason soldiers charge across an open field rather than abandon their comrades-in-arms. Raleigh’s fate serves as a reminder that Fawcett’s obsession cost not only his own life but the lives of two young men.

Fawcett’s Victorian upbringing also hints at future costs. Although he never enjoyed much wealth or luxury, Fawcett nonetheless was born into privilege. His father, Edward Boyd Fawcett, is described as a “member of the Prince of Wales’s inner circle” (38). Like many aristocrats, Edward Fawcett became addicted to self-indulgence. He wasted his family’s fortune on drinking and gratifying his sexual appetites. Fawcett rejects his father's dissolute ways and adopts rigid fitness habits, but Fawcett’s own obsession also leaves his family in dire financial straits. By devoting all of his resources to the pursuit of Z, he forces his wife and children to live in “genteel poverty” (117).

Grann knows that Fawcett’s obsession proved costly. Grann also knows that the distinguished scholar John Hemming holds Fawcett in contempt as a kind of reckless amateur, who accomplished nothing of significance. Grann, however, takes Fawcett seriously, which is why, for instance, Grann describes his own experiences in pursuit of Fawcett at the RGS. In short, Grann’s own research in the RGS archives is less significant than the fact that Fawcett took classes and trained there before ever launching an expedition into the Amazon, but Grann’s descriptions of the work he went through to understand Fawcett’s journey help set the tone for the rest of the book.