THE BRIDGE IN THE JUNGLE

Doubtful whether this can secure more than a limited sale, to a discriminating audience. There is none of the rawness, the sheer adventure element of his earlier work, though it, too, has its macabre details. A simple enough story, secondary to the picture of life in a Central American jungle. The story centers around the loss of a child, and the finding of his body in the river, of the pagan funeral, with anachronisms of modernity interwoven, presented with an uncanny sensitivity to a strange civilization, primitive, fatalistic, garish. The story is a condemnation of the infiltration of cheap Americanisms, for which the native Indians are unprepared. Convincing, powerfully done -- but limited in appeal.