Erica Ferencik, a Boston-area novelist and essayist, will be at the South End library on Tuesday, June 25, at 6:30 PM to give a talk about her latest suspense novel, Into the Jungle. Ferencik will narrate a slide show about her month-long sojourn in the Peruvian Amazon to research her work. The novel, her second, is based on a true story and describes one woman's terrifying journey of survival in the Bolivian Amazon.

In a recent interview with the on-line magazine Dead Darlings, Ferencik said the true-life story was told by a friend, a foster child who, at sixteen found herself in Cochabamba, Bolivia, where she fell for a local man and followed him to his ancestral home. It was remote river village in the Amazon rainforest without roads, electricity, or running water. She stayed for ten years, not returning to America until she was twenty-six years old. Publishers Weekly gave Into the Jungle a starred review and called it “[A] ferocious fever dream of a thriller…Ferencik delivers an alternately terrifying and exhilarating tale.” The New York Times included in their Summer Reading Guide, saying, “Erica Ferencik paints a picture of a jungle ripe with the amorality of nature, where dropping one’s guard or losing focus means death from any number of sources.”

Ferencik’s first thriller, The River at Night, was a #1 Pick by Oprah, who called it “the page-turning novel you’ve been waiting for, a heart-pounding debut.” It was also a Must Read selection of Entertainment Weekly, which described the novel as “harrowing…a visceral, white knuckle rush.” Miramax has recently optioned The River at Night for film. 

The author has been a ghostwriter, editor and screenwriter, and did stand-up comedy for ten years at various clubs in Boston and New York. She was a material writer for David Letterman during the early years of his national late-night show. Her work has appeared in Salon and The Boston Globe, as well as on National Public Radio. A previous novel, Repeaters, has been optioned for film.

Into the Jungle will be available for borrowing from the library and sale and signing by the author.

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