Drink the Sky

John Walker is a professor of Spanish at Queen’s University.

Toronto-based novelist Lesley Krueger has already won praise for her
first novel, Poor Player, and a fine collection of short stories, Hard
Travel. Set in Rio de Janeiro, Drink the Sky tells the story of a
Canadian couple and their two sons. Holly is a visual artist and Todd is
an environmentalist. Todd’s life is complicated by the efforts of an
unscrupulous American mining company to penetrate the Amazon jungle and
destroy the untouched Indian tribe. Holly’s life is disturbed by the
appearance of an American musician, Jay, with whom she has an affair,
and a perverted ornithologist named Powell, who is suspected of being a
child molester.

Krueger, who has lived in Brazil, captures the spirit and the color of
not only the city but also—through the adventures of Todd and native
Brazilians involved in the Rainforest Coalition—the rain forest. An
interesting leitmotif concerns the scientific research Charles Darwin
conducted during his 1832 stay in Rio. The life of Darwin is
incorporated into Holly’s artistic odyssey, which parallels the
geographical and ecological trek of her husband.

Krueger provides a satisfying resolution for her novel’s many
elements, among them abuse, kidnapping, murder, land-grabbing, genocide,
and personal and family problems. Drink the Sky is a powerful, timely,
harrowing, and immensely readable book.