Grann, a New Yorker staff writer, describes Fawcett as "the last of the great Victorian explorers who ventured into uncharted realms with little more than a machete, a compass, and an almost divine sense of purpose." Finding the fate of legendary Fawcett and his lost city of Z becomes Grann's quest too, and a dangerous one.
In "The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon," Grann has intricately constructed his narrative using interweaving strains. First, the author brilliantly re-creates Fawcett's perilous Amazon expeditions, especially what is known of his ill-fated 1925 journey. As Fawcett and his team confront deadly insects, exotic jungle predators, tropical diseases, and hostile Indians, readers come to understand that "the Amazon was, in short, a death trap." Second, Grann describes his own obsessive global search for evidence of Fawcett's life and disappearance. The author explores the archives of London's Royal Geographical Society, as well as the deep jungles of Brazil.
Grann hires a guide and, using the evidence he's discovered, retraces Fawcett's last steps through the Amazon, as best he can. As the author learns, the Amazon has been radically transformed over the last eight decades by logging and agriculture. As Grann's guide tells him, "Only the Indians respect the forest. The white people cut it all down." Yet Grann finds, and interviews, an old Indian woman who says she remembers Fawcett passing through. Grann also meets Vajuvi, the chief of the tribe that allegedly killed Fawcett. Vajuvi tells Grann: "People always say [we] killed the Englishmen. But we did not. We tried to save them."
