Amazon Lily

Originally published in 1988 in softcover, this novel won the Romantic Times Best New Adventure Writer Award in that year, and has been recommended in the Romance Reader's Handbook as an all-time recommended read. The story follows Illinois farm-bred social worker Corey McKinney on a church mission to report on the San Reys reserve in the Amazon jungle of Brazil. Flying the plane on the last leg of her journey is magnetic, gravel-voiced bush pilot Asher Adams, whose crudeness has the fascination of Humphrey Bogart's in The African Queen. At San Reys, Ash saves Corey from a Xingu death pit, a lust-filled Tchikao Indian and a downpour of spiders as she is caught between her continuing repulsion from and growing attraction to him, the latter leading finally to graphically rendered consummation. Alternately cynical and tender, clown and caretaker, Asher finally sends Corey back to Pleasant Grove and her Dudley Do-right fiance while he continues his search for his brother in the jungle. This is not the end of the story, however, as Ash, who smells of the jungle and the cockpit, who reads Mad magazine and quotes Tolkien, draws the reader into this richly detailed, if predictably plotted, love story. (Feb.)