Toxic Fr.O.G.

by Dr. Richard Roach

Overview

Fran is a senior in high school who has always been odd. Her best friend is a full-blooded Potawatomie First Nation woman. Fran’s friends call her “Frog” because of her science interest. But her interest soon sends her into the French Guiana jungle to become a shaman’s apprentice. The two friends have separate interests, but what binds them together is a man who hates Indians and is trying to kill them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781532087257
Publisher:	iUniverse, Incorporated
Publication date:	07/08/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	316
File size:	23 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Richard Roach is an associate professor of Internal Medicine at the Homer Stryker School of Medicine. He teaches internal medicine, global healthe ant tropical medicine. He has worked extensively in Africa and Madagascar an has published three editions of Tropical Pediatrics. He and his wife Priscilla have lived in Kalamazoo for twenty two years. His grown children reside in Minnesota.

Editorial Reviews

2020-12-22
A young woman with a passionate scientific interest in frog toxins travels to the Amazon jungle and becomes a shaman’s apprentice in this debut novel.

Seventeen-year-old Francine Olivière Gagner of Portage, Michigan, never fit in with most kids, partly because she has hyperesthesia syndrome (she hates being touched, for example) and borderline Asperger’s. She does have a best friend in Melonee Hall; they have different interests, but both are of First Nations heritage. Walking late one night to Fran’s house, Melonee is attacked by Robert Rousch, a knife-wielding man who rants: “I hate you savages. You all need to be scalped.” Though he’s eventually convicted, he serves only a few years before being released. In the meantime, the two friends study martial arts for self-defense, graduate from high school, and share rooms while attending separate colleges. Fran receives a grant to study abroad in French Guiana, where she hopes to learn about poison-dart frogs and their biochemistry. She gets the chance to serve as an apprentice to a village shaman deep in the jungle, a difficult but enlightening process. Returning to the United States with valuable specimens, she—and her toxic frog—has a final confrontation with Rousch. In the first half of his book, Roach tells an engaging but meandering and episodic tale. The story really takes off in the second half with Fran’s intriguing trip to French Guiana. The tests she faces are considerable both mentally and physically, from adopting an unfamiliar tribal language and culture (such as being expected to stay put in a tiny hut during her period) to the shaman’s grueling teaching. Fran is always a scientist first, making her observations of shamanistic practices especially valuable. A satisfying ending ties all of the tale’s strands together nicely.

A riveting, well-judged blend of scientific discovery, mysticism, and personal development.

Kirkus Reviews