 Book Reviews
with Robin Osborne
The Mapmaker's Wife
By Robert Whitaker
Doubleday $32.95
 This 'True Tale of Love, Murder and Survival in the Amazon' tells the story of an 18th century French scientist and his South American-born wife whose love prompted her to undertake one of the most remarkable land journeys in recorded history.
Between their marriage in Quito and their retirement decades later in France, Jean Godin and Isabel Grameson mostly lived apart. Jean had gone to South America with a 10-man party that had chosen the high Andean town of Quito for measurements aimed at solving the dilemma about the precise size and shape of the Earth.
Nearby, then aged six, lived Isabel, his future wife.
Twenty years after their marriage, much of which saw Jean away on fieldwork, Isabel assembled a party for a 3,000-mile, six months' trek across the continent. She was bound for French Guiana and the arms of her waiting husband, prevented by the political rivalries of distant Europe from taking the perilous trip in the other direction.
Enthralled crowds turned out to witness her departure: 'The wealthier women had even dressed up for the occasion, picking out their finest silk clothing to wear... whispering in disbelief at what was about to pass. Isabel Godin was heading off into the Amazon.'
Adds Whitaker, 'In more than 200 years of Amazon exploration, no solo traveller had been lost in the forest for any length of time and emerged alive, and there was little reason to believe that Isabel would be the first.'
When she began the last, six-week phase of the walk, she turned her back on the rotting bodies of her brothers and nephew and staggered alone into the bush, surviving on water from plant leaves and eggs raided from a bird's nest.
'What seems to count most is an inner psychological strength, which is nurtured by purpose, hope and spiritual beliefs. These Isabel Godin had in abundance, and she was also experienced in a humble act practised by nearly all survivors: prayer.'
When she finally contacted some forest Indians, she was nursed back to fair health, taken to a mission station and helped to prepare for the next leg of her journey, a 250-mile river trip by canoe.
Isabel died in 1792 at the age of 65, outliving Jean by 11 years and being buried in the same parish cemetery. Her jungle sandals became a family heirloom, venerated as an icon of the plucky woman's survival.
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