About this item
The poignant story of a girl who overcomes unique hardship and deprivation - growing up with a troop of capuchin monkeys - to find ultimate redemption. In 1954, in a remote mountain village in South America, a little girl was abducted. She was four years old. Marina Chapman was stolen from her housing estate and then abandoned deep in the Colombian jungle. That she survived is a miracle. Two days later, half-drugged, terrified, and starving, she came upon a troop of capuchin monkeys. Acting entirely on instinct, she tried to do what they did she ate what they ate and copied their actions, and little by little, learned to fend for herself. So begins the story of her five years among the monkeys, during which time she gradually became feral she lost the ability to speak, lost all inhibition, lost any real sense of being human, replacing the structure of human society with the social mores of her new simian family.
About the Author
Born in London and now based in Wales, Ghostwriter Lynne Barrett-Lee has been a full time author since the mid nineties. Having enjoyed several years of success as a short story writer, with her fiction appearing in almost all of the UK's leading women's magazines, she had her first novel, the acclaimed Julia Gets a Life, published by Bantam in 2000. She has since written seven further novels, including her 2006 work, Barefoot in the Dark, which was shortlisted for the inaugural Melissa Nathan Award. Lynne was also approached to write one of the first titles in the Quick Reads series for emergent readers, and went on to ghost a further title for TV presenter Fiona Phillips.
Lynne began ghostwriting full length non-fiction in 2007, when approached to co-author paraplegic Melanie Davies' incredible story, Never Say Die, and since that successful collaboration has been ghostwriting full time. Her 2010 title, for Faith Scott, I Won't Forgive What You Did, enjoyed seven weeks in the UK Sunday Times Bestseller list, as did the 2012 memoir The Baby Laundry. She also ghosted the acclaimed memoir Giant George: life with the World's Tallest Dog a bestselling title in both the UK and US.
More recently, Lynne ghosted two bestselling titles which were published in the spring of this year. The first, Mum's Way, is the story of mum of eight, Angie Millthorpe, who died of breast cancer, aged 48, in 2010. The second, The Girl With No Name, was published in May 13, and relates the story of a young girl abandoned in the jungles of Colombia, and has already been sold in eighteen countries, with film rights being negotiated and a National Geographic documentary being shown in December 13.
Lynne also co-writes a major non-fiction series for one of the world's leading publishers, under a pseudonym. The first seven titles have also all been Sunday Times bestsellers, with three more being published in 2013/14. The series was launched in the USA in 2013, and the first ebook in the series was a NY Times bestseller.
Lynne also writes about writing, as she teaches the craft weekly, at Cardiff University - her ebook NOVEL being the written distillation of her popular novel writing course.
