The Mapmakers Wife, Robert Whitaker
The Mapmakers Wife, Robert Whitaker
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The Mapmaker's Wife
A True Tale Of Love, Murder, And Survival In The Amazon

Author: Robert Whitaker

Narrator: Eric Jason Martin

Unabridged: 10 hr 30 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 07/30/2019

Synopsis

In the early years of the eighteenth century, a band of French scientists set off on a daring, decade-long expedition to South America in a race to measure the precise shape of the earth. Like Lewis and Clark's exploration of the American West, their incredible mission revealed the mysteries of a little-known continent to a world hungry for discovery. Scaling 16,000-foot mountains in the Peruvian Andes, and braving jaguars, pumas, insects, and vampire bats in the jungle, the scientists barely completed their mission. One was murdered, another perished from fever, and a third—Jean Godin—nearly died of heartbreak. At the expedition's end, Jean and his Peruvian wife, Isabel Gramesón, became stranded at opposite ends of the Amazon, victims of a tangled web of international politics. Isabel's solo journey to reunite with Jean after their calamitous twenty-year separation was so dramatic that it left all of eighteenth-century Europe spellbound. Her survival—unprecedented in the annals of Amazon exploration—was a testament to human endurance, female resourcefulness, and the power of devotion.

Drawing on the original writings of the French mapmakers, as well as his own experience retracing Isabel's journey, acclaimed writer Robert Whitaker weaves a riveting tale rich in adventure, intrigue, and scientific achievement.

About Robert Whitaker

Robert Whitaker is a science journalist and author. He has won the George Polk Award for Medical Writing and a National Association of Science Writers' Award for best magazine article. He was a finalist for the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, considered journalism's top prize. He has also published more than twenty short stories in literary magazines such as the Indiana Review, Black Warrior Review, Florida Review, and Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Prose. His long fascination with South America began in the late 1970s, when he built and lived in a bamboo hut on the Ecuadorian coast. He now lives and writes in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Cherisa on April 18, 2022

The Europeans in the expedition and the colonial policies they were subject to were pretty annoying. The eponymous wife of the title only gets a relatively short section near the end so it’s strange the book is named for her. The story was frustrating throughout. Some of the science was interesting,......more

Goodreads review by Mag on February 14, 2015

It's a delightful book, even though the title misrepresents what it really is about. The mapmaker's wife, Isabel Godin, occupies less than half of its pages and, even though her story is a very interesting one, it's part of an even more colourful story of the French Academy of Sciences expedition in......more

Goodreads review by Jeanette on October 24, 2017

The Mapmaker's Wife intrigued me - the journey of Isabel Godin across the Amazonian jungle to be reunited with her husband after 20 long years. Yet, it wasn't what I was expecting. After a brief mention of Isabel (still a child in the convent), Robert Whitaker plunges into the tale of the French Exp......more

Goodreads review by Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship on March 22, 2024

I went into this book knowing it was mismarketed and that it’s really about a team of French scientists—and their Spanish minders—on an expedition to what is now Ecuador, in the 1730s and 40s, rather than the rainforest trek of the wealthy local woman who married an expedition assistant. (Said rainf......more

Goodreads review by Clare on April 30, 2017

I found this an engrossing read, focusing on the exploits of a team of French mapmakers in recently colonised South America, and a woman who took her destiny into her own hands in order to be reunited with her husband. We get a very good look at the then-impenetrable jungles and broad path of the Am......more

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