It would make a good Indiana Jones story: a 500-year-old legend. An ancient curse. A stunning medical mystery. And a pioneering journey into the unknown heart of the world’s densest jungle.
It was the real life adventure of bestselling author Doug Preston who chronicles it all in his newest book “The Lost City of the Monkey God.” Preston will be in the Grand Rapids area Sept. 13 at 7 p.m. to talk about his book and adventure at Schuler Books & Music, 2660 28th St. SE.
Since the days of conquistador Hernan Cortes, rumors have circulated about a lost city of immense wealth hidden somewhere in the Honduran interior, called the White City or the Lost City of the Monkey God. In 1940, swashbuckling journalist Theodore Morde returned from the rainforest with hundreds of artifacts and an electrifying story of having found the Lost City of the Monkey God- but then committed suicide without revealing its location.
Three quarters of a century later, bestselling author Doug Preston joined a team of scientists on a groundbreaking new quest. In 2012 he climbed aboard a rickety, single-engine plane carrying the machine that would change everything: lidar, a highly ad-vanced, classified technology that could map the terrain under the densest rainforest canopy. In an unexplored valley ringed by steep mountains, that ight revealed the unmistakable image of a sprawling metropolis, tantalizing evidence of not just an undis- covered city but an enigmatic, lost civilization.
Venturing into this raw, treacherous, but breathtakingly beautiful wilderness to con rm the discovery, Preston and the team bat tled torrential rains, quickmud, disease-carrying insects, jaguars, and deadly snakes. But it wasn’t until they returned that tragedy struck: Preston and others found they had contracted in the ruins a horrifying, sometimes lethal-and incurable-disease.
Preston is the author of 35 books, both fiction and nonfiction, sixteen of which have been “New York Times” bestsellers. Before becoming a writer, he worked as an editor at the American Museum of Natural History in New York’s and was managing editor of “CURATOR” magazine. He also writes about archaeology and paleontology for the “New Yorker,” “National Geographic,” and the Smithsonian and currently serves on the board of the Authors Guild.
For more information about Preston’s visit or other events at Schuler Books & Music, visit schulerbooks.com.
