Drink the Sky
When Holly and Todd move to Brazil, Todd disappears up the Amazon, fighting to save it. The neglected Holly drifts into a glittering affair. But what about their children? And the man who stalks them.
The Austens—Todd, Holly and their two sons—arrive in Rio de Janeiro for a two-year stay. Holly is a frustrated visual artist, Todd an environmentalist who wants to push mining conglomerates out of the Amazon.
In this literary thriller, set during the turbulent 1990s, Todd disappears on his quest. Meanwhile, Holly begins a reconnaissance mission of her own. In a city of lush tropical excess, she hopes to reclaim not only her art, but her sense of self, feeling battered by the demands of marriage and motherhood.
Both Holly and Todd are driven by very modern obsessions and a timeless passion for risk. While Todd pursues a vanished people through the Amazon, Holly abandons herself to emotional impulse, plunging into an affair and testing the dark limits of her art.
But where does this leave the children? Especially when a man Holly suspects to be a pedophile begins to stalk them. Is the American a real threat? Or is Holly’s imagination raging out of control?
As the Austens’ marriage disintegrates, Holly and Todd enter a downward spiral of temptation and peril. In Brazil, a place they don’t understand, they are surrounded by friends they only think they know. Soon the treacherous physical and emotional terrain threatens to swallow them whole–and take their children with them.
This propulsive novel asks hard questions about the nature of our responsibilities to those we love and to ourselves, about the split between private and public values, and the dire personal cost of reaching for our ideals. In a fast-paced climax, with their boys in grave danger, Holly and Todd are asked to sacrifice more than they’ve ever imagined. Can they save their boys without losing themselves?
