While Ford dreams of the jungle from docile, mechanized Detroit, Horacio, a man who has come to Fordlandia to escape his past, is charged with the task of recruiting labor from the surrounding native villages. The rubber plantation is run by ineffectual, disgraced Ford executives, whose impossible mission is to impose the industrialist's will on the resilient, menacing Amazon. Doomed to follow Ford's flawed plan, Horacio attempts to stave off the jungle's ultimate victory and comes face-to-face with the true futility at the heart of man's struggle for mastery over nature.

Eduardo Sguiglia's exquisitely imagined Fordlandia is a town of characters by turns engaging and enigmatic, who will draw the reader into their various worlds so effortlessly and ingenuously that their dreams, discoveries, and downfalls begin to seem as immediate and piercing as one's own. Just as the jungle's exotic essence snares Henry Ford and lures him into its muddy, dreadful heart, Sguiglia's fresh prose and elegant storytelling beckon us, disorient us, and leave us bewildered and full of wonder.