DESCRIPTION

This is a romance between a man and a woman that shows the scope and breadth of Brazil, a land of many layers from its sunstruck, hardpan north to the lush country of the south. There is no country like it. Brazil ranges from the jet-set inhabitants of Rio de Janeiro, to the industrial city of Sao Paulo, to the mineral-rich State of Minas Gerais.

Only Africa can be compared to the variety of Brazilian terrain and life, but the people, the Brazilian people, stun the scholar with their assortment of style and complexion. All of this history is packed between the Equator and the Tropic of Capricorn.

EXCERPT

"Carioca women, Linden Bradley thought, watching the beach from the shade of her sidwalk cafe umbrella, were a special breed of female. Skimpily shielded by cloth scraps, they undulated, never merely walked, across the hot sand. They raised bronzed arms with languid grace to summon the mate vendor for a cool native tea, or the coco verde boy, who zigzagged eel-like through the crowd of oiled bodies with his basket of fruit. He carried a fearsome machete which he used to lop off the heads of the green coconuts, and from a quiver in his belt selected straws to tuck into the pale liquid. The chilled, creamy juice was one of Linden's favorite Brazilian food flavors."

"Linden had viewed the scene from higher up in an airliner, but this was different, a sight not to be forgotten experienced this way. The cataracts seemed only yards below; their explosive power drowned out the sound of the Cessna's engines. Forming a common boundary for Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina, the falls fled from a monstrous plain of brown water, the mouth of the Iguassu River. From here it joined the Parana. Alberto's outpost was not far upriver."

"Given five full minutes each, richly costumed figures emerged from the wings and paraded the ramp. The judges were assembled in a special box.

"Scintillating, coruscating, towering, flowering headdresses teetering, and ten-foot trains, trailing or supported by reverent attendants, the dream-like fantasies strutted their stuff. Tens of thousands of hand-sewn beads and sequins, seed pearls, tiny mirrors flashed like miniature suns."

"Treading cheerfully on Dominguez land, Machado and his companion headed straight for one of the cows that Cole had painstakingly driven to this site. A snick of metal, so faint only Cole, who had been listening for it, could hear; the safety catch?"

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