The White Mary: A Novel

by Kira Salak

Overview

Marika Vecera is a young war reporter, recently back from the Congo and venturing into the first serious relationship of her life, when she hears the news that Robert Lewis has committed suicide. Lewis was a famous war correspondent and a hero to Marika, and as she begins working on his biography she gets word from a missionary who claims to have seen Lewis alive. Astounded, Marika uproots her life in Boston and heads to Papua New Guinea—the world's least explored frontier—to uncover the truth. Encountering all the dangers of jungle travel and the haunting mythology of native tribes, Marika's search for Lewis becomes an unforgettable journey into the depths of the human soul.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312429041
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	09/01/2009
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	5.42(w) x 8.24(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

KIRA SALAK is a contributing editor for National Geographic Adventure. She lives in Montana.

Reading Group Guide

About this Guide

The following author biography and list of questions about The White Mary are intended as resources to aid individual readers and book groups who would like to learn more about the author and this book. We hope that this guide will provide you a starting place for discussion, and suggest a variety of perspectives from which you might approach The White Mary.

Discussion Questions

1. At many points in the novel Marika doubts that Robert Lewis is still alive, yet she presses on with her journey into the jungle. What do you think motivates her to risk her life in Papua New Guinea?

2. How do the novel's main characters differ in their attitude about suffering and its effect on our lives? How do the events in the story change their perspectives on suffering?

3. Is it irresponsible or selfish of Marika to live the way she does, to consistently put herself in mortal danger?

4. How does Tobo's way of seeing the world differ from that of the white people in the novel? Do you think he sees the world more or less clearly than they do?

5. What does Marika mean when she tells Seb, on page 102, "Nowhere's safe…Nowhere in the world."?

6. Does Marika believe in spirits and magic by the end of the novel? Do you think the author meant to suggest that they do exist in the world of the novel, or that they are merely a superstition?

7. Why is Marika unable to see Seb when she returns from Congo?

8. What is the significance of the book's epigraph?

9. What happens to Marika in the cave? How does she change while hiding out there from the villagers with Lewis? What is the "lightness" she feels there, "as if she lost a weighty part of her" ( p. 323)?

10. What role does sex play in the novel? How do Marika's motives and her experience differ in her experiences with Seb, Sanders, and Lewis?

11. Look at Lewis's lecture to Marika about the difference between the people in Walwasi and those in America (p. 328.) Do you think there's any truth to what he's saying? Are there lessons to be drawn from the way of life in places like Walwasi that can be applied to life in the developed world?

12. In the end, Is Marika better off for having traveled to Papua New Guinea?

Editorial Reviews

Harrowing . . . Salak's descriptions of the jungle passage are compelling and dreamlike.” —The Washington Post

“Keenly observed . . . As Vecera cuts her way through swamps and forests, encountering insects, snakes and the native population along the way, you'll think of the travails of Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen.” —USA Today

“There aren't many books that we hand to friends, urging, 'You have to read this.' The White Mary is one of them.” —The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

“Salak's descriptions of the sights, sounds, and smells of the jungle, with its brutal chieftains and servile women, brings the story to life with all of its horrors and satisfactions.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

From the Publisher

A young reporter embarks on a dangerous adventure in Salak's gripping debut novel, a blend of Heart of Darkness and Tomb Raider. Like her protagonist, Marika Vecera, award-winning journalist Salak has traveled solo-and narrowly escaped death-in the world's most remote and terrifying places, including war-torn Congo and the interior of Papua New Guinea. Marika, an ambitious journalist, travels to discover the truth about war correspondent Robert Lewis, who has observed some of the modern world's greatest atrocities. He is believed to have committed suicide, but a letter from a missionary leaves Marika thinking he may still be alive in the wilds of Papua New Guinea. She sets off on her quest, and eventually malaria, ritual murder and arduous trekking through the wilderness lead Marika to some startling discoveries and a pathway out of her own past trauma. While the book can be harrowing (the graphic descriptions of torture are sobering and hard to put out of mind), it offers Marika a redemptive optimism in the face of the worst humanity has to offer. (Aug.)

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Publishers Weekly

What is Marika Vecera doing in a dugout canoe on a waterway deep in the jungles of Papua New Guinea? A war correspondent who came close to death on a risky assignment in Africa, she was taking time off by writing the biography of her hero, Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Lewis, who reportedly committed suicide, when she learns that a pastor claims to have spotted him in the distant island nation. Now Marika is on a death-defying quest to find him, a quest that takes her far away from gentle psychologist Seb, with whom she seems to be falling in love. In this debut novel, Salak draws on her experience as an award-winning journalist to delineate both the dangers of her profession and a portrait of an obsessive personality. Throughout, she moves deftly among multiple storylines: Marika's seesawing relationship with Seb, horrific experiences in Africa, efforts to research Lewis, and daunting experiences in Papua New Guinea. The prose is sometimes a bit pulpy, but the story is undeniably involving as Marika (the "white mary," or white woman, as the natives call her) presses toward her goal. What she discovers is unexpectedly chilling. A good addition for all fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ4/1/08.]
—Barbara Hoffert

Library Journal