Word: jeronimo
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...maybe 15 people taken out of a building and lined up in a launch on the water. The Sandinistas shot them with automatic rifles. The bodies fell into the water." Two days later the Sandinistas burned houses in Wiwinak, where Gonzales lived. Several miles upstream, the village of San Jeronimo was reduced to ashes...
This move puts Theroux, the author of eight earlier novels and three collections of stories, on the kind of ground he has successfully worked before: a primitive backwater populated by eccentrics and obsessives. Allie pays $400 for an abandoned jungle settlement called Jeronimo. "It's about as unimportant as a place can possibly be," he says happily. "You talk about starting from scratch. Well, Jeronimo is scratch." Within weeks, Allie's manic energy transforms a rank, overgrown clearing into a neat, well-ordered community. As he keeps improving his creation he boasts, "The Iron Age comes ... A month...
When the inevitable occurs, the novel abruptly shifts from an improbable idyl into a grim farce. Allie's quirkiness becomes derangement. He mistakes the destruction of Jeronimo for the obliteration of the U.S. and decides that he and his family must hide even deeper in the wilderness and endure greater discomforts. Charlie's loyalty begins to waver as every day brings new evidence that his father is crazy...