About this item
“The first time we came here I didn’t know what to expect,” she told me as we paddled upstream. “What we found just blew me away. Jaguars, pumas, river otters, howler monkeys. The place was like a Noah’s Ark for all the endangered species driven out of the rest of Central America. There was so much life! That expedition was when I first saw the macaws.”As a young woman, Sharon Matola lived many lives. She was a mushroom expert, an Air Force survival specialist, and an Iowa housewife. She hopped freight trains for fun and starred as a tiger tamer in a traveling Mexican circus. Finally she found her one true calling: caring for orphaned animals at her own zoo in the Central American country of Belize. Beloved as “the Zoo Lady” in her adopted land, Matola became one of Central America’s greatest wildlife defenders.
About the Author
Bruce Barcott is a Guggenheim Fellow in nonfiction and an award-winning author who writes about science, the environment, and the outdoor world. His new book, Weed the People: The Future of Legal Marijuana in America,will be published by Time Books in April 2015. For the past 15 years Barcott's science and environmental writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, Outside Magazine, and other national publications. His previous books include The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw; The Measure of a Mountain: Beauty and Terror on Mount Rainier; and Northwest Passages. He lives on Bainbridge Island, near Seattle, with his wife, author Claire Dederer.
