a tale that waited a century to be told…

This is a true story.

After six years of prospecting for gold in South Africa, 31-year-old Lee Williams sails to South America in pursuit of the ultimate adventure. A long horseback trek across the highlands of Argentina brings him to La Paz, Bolivia, where he meets James Orton, an Englishman and, like himself, “an experienced victim of the wanderlust.” They are of one mind: to follow the Amazon from a trickle in the mountains of southern Perú to its mouth on the Atlantic. A journey of more than 4,000 miles and a feat that no one before them had claimed.

The expedition begins without fanfare in May 1907. Day after day, they follow the river into the depths of endless forest, the trappings of civilization vanishing behind them. As they near their journey’s end, they imagine the acclaim that awaits. But their story will have a far different ending, and the sole record of it is Williams’s account published in a New Orleans newspaper—and then forgotten.

“Unique, informative, entertaining, and written with a genuine flair for narrative storytelling, Amazonia 1907 is extraordinary and unreservedly recommended.”  —Midwest Book Review

“Resurrected from oblivion, Amazonia 1907 is the first-hand account of an epic, early twentieth-century expedition — a journey of over 4,000 miles on foot, horseback, raft and riverboat. Inspired, intelligent and replete with keen observations, Williams’s narrative is a classic adventure travelogue.”  —Keith Muscutt, author and explorer of Peru’s Upper Amazon

“Williams unreels his remarkable story with the immediacy, wit and moral response of Mark Twain in Following the Equator.”  —Book Report

“Journeys to mysterious places are as old as civilization, but I have never read a wilderness account as mesmerizing as this one. Williams’ two-year adventure in the wildest place on earth is a tale not to be missed.”  —Wayne Flynt, Historian and Author

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Fair Oaks Press
262 Somerset St.
San Francisco, CA  94134