In a country she chose for ‘its landscapes and lax visa-extension policies’, Mary is a tour guide at a remote lodge in the Amazon. There she meets Héctor, who sneaks into her hammock late at night or leaves tiny gifts at her door, tempting her to stay longer than she’d planned.

But then she begins to see fires on uninhabited land, hear gunshots, cross suspicious strangers in the dead of night. She doesn’t know if it’s the start of another undeclared civil war or simply retribution on the lodge owner, whose husband had fought with the rebels before disappearing for a decade. When he reappears, Mary is suddenly forced to confront the reality of her situation and decide where her loyalties lie.

In this stunning first novella, City in the River, City in the Forest, by Melanie Westerberg, we are swept up in an exotic world, its familiar cruelty saturated with beauty. Finally, we are left only with a lingering taste of the moments in our own lives when we were forced to choose between joy and restraint, myth and logic.

Melanie Westerberg's short stories and poems have appeared in Torpedo (Australia), RozRazil (Czech Republic), Third Coast (USA) and Mid-American Review (USA). Her story ‘Watermark’ was also included in the Best New American Voices 2006 anthology (USA, Harcourt Books), edited by Jane Smiley. She lives in Austin, Texas.