Buried gold, a mysterious triple murder, the wind of the Mosquito Coast rattling the coconut palm leaves like dangling skeletons in the black night. These are some of the backdrops for Where The Devil Danced, lending a somber and sinister cast to this offbeat tale. Henry Hollenbaugh fills in the details that Paul Theroux omitted in the latter's novel, Only someone deeply familiar with The Mosquito Coast of Honduras and its dismal reality could ever narrate this spell-binding novel. In Where The Devil Danced, Hollenbaugh continues with the same theme found in his first novel, Rio San Pedro, but with a more satisfying conclusion: an American castaway, forced to go native to survive. Stranded on the desolate Mosquito Coast, the protagonist struggles to find the resources with which to return to his native New Orleans. With this goal in mind, he engages in prospecting for gold in the interior of Mosquitia, accompanied by a native girl, Electra, who stands beside him through all his trials, and whom he intends to abandon once he has obtained sufficient money to return home. Readers of the author’s previous books will not be disappointed.
