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MY REVIEW
“We’re back in Guatemala.” “When we get out this time, I’m going to bag it too.”
But they waited one trip too long and Murphy’s life as a pilot flying marijuana from Guatemala to the States is over.
I’m not going into everything that is in the blurb, but I do remember hearing a lot about the CIA, the cartels, corrupt politicians…on both sides…those with their own agendas. To me, everything about the ‘drug wars’ and the way our government handles it is all wrong. A book like House Of Jaguar gets my emotions roiled. The tragic circumstances of the poor and those who get in the way, makes my heart break for them.
“For two years I do not see a track. Then since you came this one’s been near. He’s very rare, a black one…Tonight after the ceremony I go and call him. Then we’ll have money for more seeds – black skins are the most valuable.”
In tragic, dangerous circumstances, there are those who open their hearts, putting their own lives on the line to help others. Dona is one of those characters and Murphy has the misfortune (?) to fall in love with her. How can it be a happy ever after?
He knows too much and tries to tell the world what is being done to the Guatemalans. It is unfortunate that no one seems to care enough to do anything about it, other than hunt him down and shut him up. He is naive to think the things he does won’t end in a bad way. Lives will be lost, but he cannot help himself. He wants her. He wants to make a difference. He wants to be a good guy. He wants to make a difference.
They kill their own. Psycopaths are turned loose on the innocent. Men turn into animals. The savage violence turns my stomach, pisses me off to no end. Why? What makes them think they are more valuable to the world than the next person? Sometimes I think, do unto others should be done unto them. You reap what you sow. You take a life, you have to give one…yours!
Violence, tragedy, intensity, emotions…The author has lived them and it shows in the story he tells. I don’t read books like House Of Jaguar too often any more. They make me soooo angry, frustrated and disturbed because it seems like we, as a people, never learn and history does repeat itself…over and over again.
The ending….
I voluntarily reviewed a free copy of House Of Jaguar by Mike Bond.
GOODREADS BLURB
Shot down over the jungle with a planeload of marijuana, Vietnam War hero Joe Murphy gets caught up in the brutal Guatemalan Civil War when he witnesses an attack on a Mayan village by the Guatemalan Army and its CIA “advisors”. Badly injured, he escapes on a nightmare trek through the jungle, hunted by the Army, the CIA, and death squads.
Healed by guerrilla doctor Dona Villalobos, he falls in love with her and tries to save her from the War’s widening horror of insanity, tragedy, and death. Caught in the crucible of violence and love, he learns the peaks and depths the human heart can reach, and what humans will do for, and to,each other.
Based on the author’s own experiences as one of the last foreign correspondents left alive in Guatemala after over 100 journalists had been killed by Army death squads.
This interview with Mike Bond lasts for 30+ minutes.
ABOUT MIKE BOND
MIKE BOND has been called the “master of the existential thriller” by the BBC and “one of the 21st century’s most exciting authors” by the Washington Times. He is a bestselling novelist, environmental activist, international energy expert, war and human rights correspondent and award-winning poet who has lived and worked in many remote and dangerous parts of the world. His critically acclaimed novels depict the innate hunger of the human heart for what is good, the intense joys of love, the terror and fury of battle, the sinister vagaries of international politics and multinational corporations, and the beauty of the vanishing natural world.
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