Chapter 9

Actually, Father had pulled some strings, and I’d have been able to get a seat even if I’d been too late to get my name on the signup sheet.

Dr. Avila was quite attractive for an older man, a compactly built Brazilian with dark good looks and a fascination with his chosen field of archaeology that flashed in his brown eyes.

In spite of myself, I was enthralled by the guest speaker, by his words, and I completely pushed aside my father’s instructions.

Dr. Avila spoke of the strange cities he’d explored and helped excavate and the peoples who at one time had inhabited them—an Inca citadel in Peru, a religious temple in Cambodia, ruins in French Tunisia. However, his primary interest lay along the Amazon, and that drew me in and intrigued me most of all. I wanted to explore the river that almost bisected the South American continent.