Book Review

When Worlds Collide: Trail of Tears by David Boyne Copyright 2002 All Rights Reserved A review of Land Without Evil, by Matthew J. Pallamary ISBN 0-912880-09-0 Charles Publishing Company Oceanside, CA Visit Matthew Pallamary's website— http://www.mystic-ink.org/m-pallamary/index.html

Imagine a setting 250 years in the past, in the rain forests of South America.

Imagine walking among the peaceful Guarani, a society that has survived and prospered in the dense rain forest for millennia.

Then imagine all hell breaking loose.

The Europeans have come.

The Spanish Jesuits are on a mission from their god: convert the Guarani to Christianity, convert the tribal forest society into the white man’s ways of cultivation, herding, clearing the land to live closely in barricaded towns.
Failing that, move on. And in the wake of the Jesuits, European society will make slaves of the Guarani, and erase their heathen society.

Matthew Pallamary’s novel, Land Without Evil is a story rich with layers of conflict.

Guarani society, built on mentoring and oral history, and natural technologies of exploiting the plants and animals of the rain forest, while leaving them unaltered—is in a death struggle with the invading European society, built on reading, books, farming, herding, and guns.

The Guarani rely on fast-induced hallucinations or delusions brought upon by the nearness of death from disease, for spiritual guidance. Take it, or leave it. The Jesuits rely on the bible. They insist that everyone do the same.

Pallamary integrates the many layers of moral, philosophical, and societal conflicts of Land Without Evil in one of the few storytelling genres common to all cultures and societies—the coming of age story.

The story opens with its hero, Avá-Tapé, estranged from his father, and living with his mother and sister inside the Jesuit mission. Avá-Tapé is being schooled in the European technologies, and excels: he reads, and reads well. He eats their food. He studies their ways. Above all, he explores their religion.

Before long, events reunite Avá-Tapé with his father, and under that elder’s guidance, Avá-Tapé begins an extended spiritual and social enlightenment in the rain forest.

Pallamary tells his complex story with language that is simple, direct, and at times, poetic. This language reflects the relationship of the Guarani to their rain forest. The same simple language lends a distance, and indifference, to the scenes of the Europeans' violent intrusion on the rain forest and its creatures—plant, animal and human.

Within the telling of Avá-Tapé's journey to manhood, is also the journey to first love, the journey to spiritual enlightenment, and in the final conflict, the journey that takes Avá-Tapé and his Guarani people in flight from the death and slavery of the Europeans, deep into the rain forest, in search of the promised, the envisioned, Land Without Evil.

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