AIRMEN OF THE AMAZON

This is one of the best adventure stories we have read this season, it has flying, exploring, capture by hostile Indian Jivaro tribes, the lure of models for boys, the importance of rubber, the penetration of the Germans into the economic life of Brazil, the growth of the idea that little as we may understand people of other races, we must learn to get on with them and respect them. It is both the story of Longstreet Parr and of his father. It starts in Louisiana when the boy is a young cub awaiting his parent's return from four years of air freighting for the Amazones Company. The elder man does not get back because of a crash in the jungle due to a bite from a coral snake. He recovers only to be captured and held for the next ten years during which he does research. In the meantime the boy grows up vowing that he will find his father. He is sent eventually to fly for the Trans-American line in competition with the German Condor group. There is a miraculous and exciting meeting in the jungle, but truth is strange nowadays, no fiction could be more far-fetched. This will thrill the boys but they will also pick up a great deal of information.