The Mapmaker's Wife: A True Tale of Love, Murder, and Survival in the Amazon

The European Enlightenment was an extraordinary time for all intellectuals. France was the center of scientific research: Spain concentrated on exploring - and occupying - the new world. When French scientists suggested a journey to the Andes to measure the lines of latitude and longitude there and settle the question of the shape of the Earth, King Louis XV saw a chance to get information on the closely guarded Spanish empire.

Robert Whitaker has won acclaim for his scientific journalism and he brings all his skills to The Mapmaker's Wife. The real story of 18th century mapmaking is more exciting than any fiction and the characters involved are full of life. As part of his research for the book, the author traveled to South America. Although he doesn't mention his own travels in the book, the detailed descriptions of what travelers encountered could only have been written by someone who knew the region.

The mapmaker's wife only appears towards the end of the book. Isobel Godin was a Peruvian who had married one of the younger members of the mapmaking expedition. After waiting twenty years for him to return, she set out east across the Amazon jungle to find him. Her journey became one of the great survivor stories of the century and nicely complements the experiences of the French mapmakers in their journey west.


TALE OF HISTORY, ADVENTURE, LOVE AND SCIENCE   September 27, 2006
Denis Benchimol Minev (Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil)
11 out of 11 found this review helpful

This book is actually a collection of different topics weaved together with the background of the love story between a lowly French scientist and an upperclass Ecuadorian lady.

The book starts with a historical science controversy, between Cassini and Newton, regarding the actual shape of the earth. Cassini thought the world was elongated and Newton argued it was fat at the Equator. In order to reach a conclusion, a team is put together to make physical experiments at the Equator to define the shape of the Earth. That is when La Condamine and Louis Godin come in, two top French scientists, who embark on this years long trip. What should have lasted two years takes more than ten. A large group is put together to support the scientist in their journey.

The author also describes in great detail the society into which they are initially welcomed in Ecuador. However difficulties with clergy and governors arise, culminating in the public lynching of the doctor of the expedition.

All this occurs before we get to the story of Jean Godin and Isabel Grameson. Jean is the nephew of the scientist Louis Godin and Isabel is the daghter of a rich landowner in Ecuador. They begin their life together in Ecuador during the expedition and then decide to stay on for a while, but when Jean's business enterprises go bankrupt he decides to go back to France with his wife and now large family of four children. He heads through the Amazon, a dangerous journey, in the hopes of figuring out the way and then coming back to get his wife. For a number of reasons, once he is done and safely at the mouth of the Amazon, he does not go back. So, after her four children die of various diseases, Izabel gets tired of waiting and heads on her own journey across the Amazon. And that is when the story happens, which I will not ruin by telling here.

This book mixed history, science, adventure and love quite well. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in South American history, history of science, love and adventure stories. It is a timeless classic, a story that enthralled people in the 18th century and continues to do so today.


Reads like a college textbook   July 7, 2004
Craig D. Munson (Vista, CA United States)
10 out of 16 found this review helpful

I bought this book based on the New Yorker Magazine review and the Amazon.com review. What is billed as an adventure novel with all the juicy attributes of "Love, Murder and Survival" in the Amazon jungle ended up far from it. Basically the book is a scientific, cronological and historical textbook account of an expedition seeking to determine the mathematical latitude and longitude at the equator. Unless you are interested in such things or want to return to the classroom, forget it. BORING and not as billed. Certainly contains none of the "adventure juice" the subtitle implies.


Superbly researched, competently written, but underwhelming   March 15, 2005
Michael Pless (Melbourne, Victoria Australia)
10 out of 12 found this review helpful

The opening few paragraphs of this book set the scene admirably, and this draws the reader onward into the book as more and more background on the life of Isobel Godin is divulged. Then there is more background - this time of the French expedition that set out to prove if the world was flattened at its poles or elongated. In the early 1700's this was indeed a vexing and important question, and its relevance? On the expedition was Isobel's future husband, Jean.

Then there is further background on the activities of the expedition scientists. Rich detail abounds of their methods and (it must be admitted,) heroic efforts to prove a fact all but irrelevant to everyday life in the twenty-first century.

And this is why the book fails, for after the first page or two, Isobel is all but ignored for the next 200 pages. Even her husband-to-be scarely rates a mention. The book is clearly ill-titled!

When she marries Jean, Isobel rates a little more prose, but here the tale loses the persepctive of time, for the decades-long work of the French scientists receives fully two-thirds of the book, but within the ten or twenty pages or so, two decades in the life of Isobel pass and she sets off on her journey. Here, the story proper starts, but by then I was laboring to finish the book and persevered only because I was loathe to leave a book I had spent so much time with already.

Whilst it couild be argued that the tale leading up to Isobel's adventure is of interest, it belies the title of the book. The rear blurb is somewhat misleading in that context, for although there is indeed murder, it is arguable that it does not directly involve Isobel: the deceased is a member of the French expedition whom Isobel doesn't even meet. Replace "murder" with "treachery" however, and the blurb would become acceptable.

Then, in the final few pages, the story comes alive for it gathers pace, but alas, this is too little, too late.

Contrast Whittaker's style with that of Huntsford (The Last Place on Earth), and the writing is dry and emotionless. In some way, I also lost (or perhaps more accurately, failed to obtain) a sense of place, and just pictured generic jungle scenes: if I'd known of some of the less well-known fauna, or had a description of the size of the bottflies, for example, or known what the buildings of Quito were made of and knew of their architecture, all would have been far more pleasant. And forgiveable.

Perhaps books like Huntsford's masterpeice, and "The Doctor of Crowthorne", and "Longitude" have spoiled me for each is riveting in its own way, but "The Mapmaker's Wife" fails to excite though I am filled with admiration for her endeavor and courage.

If only there had been more mention of her in the book.