Surviving Nature

She had an itinerary for everything. The jungle didn't care.

When a hyper-organised Australian uproots her predictable life to follow love to French Guiana, she expects an adventure. Instead, she gets a four-year crash course in survival. What was meant to be a romantic new chapter quickly dissolves into a roof that leaks like bad luck, moths that fire toxic darts, and a bureaucratic landscape more treacherous than the swamp.

As the chaos threatens to overwhelm her—and a bone-shattering tropical disease pushes her to the brink—Donna accepts a job at an isolated scientific research station deep within the Amazon rainforest. Marooned in a world where nothing is cushioned and nothing is convenient, the real test begins.

To survive, she must wage a hilarious turf war against the local wildlife, find sanctuary beneath the canopy of a magnificent old tree, and learn that the wilderness is not a playground for her personal enlightenment but a living, breathing ecosystem that refuses to move at her speed.

Witty, candid, and rich with the absurdities of life in the wild, Surviving Nature is a travel and nature memoir about what happens when the world refuses to cooperate with your plans. For anyone who has ever felt out of place, it offers a different way of looking at wild places—and the unexpected possibilities of finding home.