It's wrenching when Coleman finally leaves, having extended her stay by two years, thin, bald, ill with parasites, and emotionally wrecked from dealing with the never-ending challenges of saving animals from encroaching civilization. There are poignant breakthroughs, unsettling setbacks, terrifying dangers, narrow escapes, heartbreaking separations and reunions, and hookups and relationships, all channeled through Coleman's honest, wry, self-effacing, and always entertaining narrative. The real story is her relationship with her first assignment, a puma named Wayra. She creates wonderfully descriptive profiles of her companions, both human and animal, and tells hair-raising tales of jungle life. Readers will be hooked by Coleman's compelling storytelling right from the opening pages as she describes her shell-shocked first days, completely out of her element. This memoir begins in 2007 as Coleman, a timid, lost 24-year-old, somehow finds herself signed up for 30 days of volunteer work at a trafficked-animal rescue camp in Bolivia.
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