Let author Douglas Preston give testimony to the old adage: Truth is stranger than fiction. As the co--author, with Lincoln Child, of a series of bestselling suspense novels, Preston has explored mysteries involving sorcery, witchcraft and ancient secrets. Now he chronicles his own true-life adventures in a nonfiction book, The Lost City of the Monkey God.

Preston's quest is to find the ruins of an ancient city in the mountains of Honduras, known as the "White City" or the "Lost City of the Monkey God." Others have embarked on similar expeditions only to fail, most notably an adventurer who returned in 1940 with spectacular artifacts, but committed suicide before revealing the location of his discovery.

This time, Preston and his team are armed with sophisticated equipment, borrowed from NASA, that allows them to peer beneath the jungle growth to map the contours below. From the air, they detect the outlines of a long-lost civilization. But space-age technology is of no aid once they land and face the perils of the rainforest, including poisonous snakes, vicious jaguars and vengeful drug dealers. Ironically, their greatest danger occurs on their return home, when they are beset with an incurable illness contracted from a parasite. Is this affliction of "white leprosy" a mere coincidence, or a curse?

The Lost City of the Monkey God is more than just an adventure story. It examines such modern  issues as the ethics of archeological expeditions, man's destruction of the rainforest and the incessant creep of technology and its effects on indigenous peoples.

Readers will find themselves both shocked and captivated by this account of mysteries old and new.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Novelist Preston's irresistibly gripping account of his experiences as part of the expedition to locate an ancient city in the Honduran mountains reads like a fairy tale minus the myth. "There was once a great city in the mountains," he writes, "struck down by a series of catastrophes, after which the people decided the gods were angry and left, leaving their possessions. Thereafter it was shunned as a cursed place, forbidden, visiting death on those who dared enter." In 2012, Preston was present as the expedition team attempted to use light detection and ranging technology to identify the city's location in the uncharted wildernesses of Honduras; they " billions of laser beams into a jungle that no human beings had entered for perhaps five hundred years." The effort succeeded in locating two large sites, apparently built by the civilization that once inhabited the Mosquiteria region. The discovery led to a return trip in 2015 to explore the sites on foot, a physically and emotionally draining experience that resulted in remarkable archeological finds, specifically a cache of stone sculptures. Preston, author of The Monster of Florence and co-author with Lincoln Child of the bestselling thriller series featuring FBI agent Pendergast, brings readers into the field while enriching the narrative with historical context, beginning with 16th-century rumors of the city's existence reported by explorer Hernán Cortés after his conquest of Mexico. Along the way, Preston explains the legendary abandonment of the City of the Monkey God and provides scientific reasoning behind its reputation as life-threatening. Admirers of David Grann's The Lost City of Z will find their thirst for armchair jungle adventuring quenched here. (Jan.)