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CROSSING THE GAP

An ill-conceived excursion leads to disaster in Central America’s remote Darién jungle.

A tale from a war that has lost all sense of purpose, and of a man who finds one in the most unlikely of places.

In the winter of 2000, washed-out charter boat captain James Spring escapes from his rut in San Diego to take on Central America’s most extreme adventure offering: an overland trek through the forbidden reaches of the Darién Gap, the seventy-five-mile stretch of untamed jungle that separates Panama from Colombia.

Spring is well acquainted with the dangers of the region, or at least he's seen the headlines. Pitted against one another in the least civil of wars are Colombia's impoverished guerrillas, wealthy cocaine cartels, and the violent henchmen of the nation’s elite. Now this forty-year war has spilled over the border into southern Panama, where Colombia's rebels have beaten a retreat from the sophisticated weapons of a phantom right-wing movement.

Indian villages are burned to the ground. Missionaries disappear. Citizens are executed with bullets that appear distinctly American. But the Darién seems to guard its secrets at all costs.

Into this darkest of jungles, Spring carries demons of his own and a past that threatens to reclaim him. Accompanied only by his deckhand Matt and a vague map of landmarks long since destroyed, Spring charges blindly into an area where primitive native settlements have been forgotten by time, and jaguars still rule the night; a place where pain and loss are traded like commodities. The two Americans push headlong into forces that threaten to destroy them.

With unfathomable luck, the men survive the crossing, but the peril of their trek is revived a few months later when Spring receives a troubling message from the father of a missing British backpacker who vanished while attempting to follow the Americans’ trail.

Please help me find my son.

The journey that leads to the inconceivable re-appearance of a pair of British backpackers changes the lives of two families forever.

Crossing the Gap tells the stories of a long war that has lost all sense of purpose, and of a man who finds one in the most unlikely of places.

ADVANCE PRAISE

For some five hundred years the Darién landscape – a little sliver of jungle land at the junction of seas and continents – has transformed everyone and everything that has found its way to it. Enterprises have failed, great nations humiliated. Like Mt. Everest or the churning Colorado River, it’s a vital force, sacred to some, a curse to others. As so many do, James Spring walks into the Darién knowing everything and nothing about it. When he finally walks out, his transcontinental pilgrimage complete, he is changed – and, dramatically, so is the reader. We know we’ve been some place extraordinary.

CROSSING THE GAP is an engrossing tale told with uncommon honesty and freshness.

Todd Balf, former Senior Editor of Outside Magazine, and author of THE DARKEST JUNGLE

THE ALLURE OF CROSSING THE GAP

Crossing the Gap’s uncommon tale of adventure and obsession in the remote jungles of Central America combines the gripping tension of Jon Krakauer’s Into The Wild and Robert Kurson’s Shadow Divers with the introspection of The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen.

Crossing the Gap is a very personal narrative from a damaged soul on a slow mend. It transcends the arena of True Adventure and appeals to readers of memoirs like A.C. Weisbecker’s cult-classic In Search of Captain Zero and Augusten Burroughs’ Dry.

Crossing the Gap holds great appeal for the 650,000 monthly readers of Outside Magazine, the 724,000 readers of National Geographic Traveler, the 430,000 readers of National Geographic Adventure, the 300,000 readers of Backpacker Magazine, and the 951,000 readers of Outdoor Life Magazine.

Overseas, the story of the British backpackers’ disappearance remained front-page news for many months. A hastily ghostwritten account of these events was published as The Cloud Garden in Europe and became a #1 bestseller in the U.K.

Colombia, Panama, Central America, civil war, backpack, outdoor adventure, hiking, trekking, sports, rebel, paramilitary, kidnapping, ransom, guerrillas, terrorists, FARC, ELN, smuggling, Kuna, Embera, Waunaan, cocaine, contraband, Darien Gap, nonfiction, narrative, Narrative Non-Fiction, True Adventure, Memoir, Travel. INTO THIN AIR, Jon Krakauer, INTO THE WILD, Alan Weisbecker, Tim Cahill, THE CLOUD GARDEN, THE PERFECT STORM, Sebastian Junger, Minuteman, Minutemen, California, Ira Glass, Baja 1000, Baja 1000 race, motorcycle, This American Life, "This American Life", NPR, National Public Radio

BRIEF

A washed-out Southern California boat captain, James Spring, seeks relief from personal demons and a past that threatens to reclaim him. When he embarks with a pal upon an ill-conceived backpacking excursion through the Darién Gap – the remote jungle that separates Panama from the blood-soaked battlefields of Colombia – he is forced to recognize that some problems are not so easily left behind. The implausible luck that allows the two men to escape death at the hands of hostile Kuna Indians, Colombian rebels, and paramilitary squads runs dry when two young British hikers decide to follow the trail blazed by the Americans. Six months after the boys disappear, a desperate father hunts down Spring and makes his plea: “Please help me find my son.”

CROSSING THE GAP tells the stories of a long war that has lost all sense of purpose, and of a man who finds one in the most unlikely of places.

BIO

JAMES R. SPRING has lived much of his adult life in Latin America. From slumming as a charter boat captain, to running contraband across borders, his careers have taken him to some of the most remote pockets on the planet. He is a contributor to This American Life, heard on National Public Radio, and has been featured in radio expeditions for Atlantic Public Media on NPR. His radio assignments have ranged from 'embedding' with the Minutemen at the border, to covering the Baja 1000 off-road race - to motorcycling solo through Mexico's Sierra Madre where he recorded his experiences with Tarahumara drug traffickers. He currently resides in San Diego.

Curator and co-host of a new series for national public radio. DimeStories: 3-minute stories. Some are fiction. All are true. I'm seeking contact info for the following reclusive writers: We're interested in working with you!

John Leary, author of the short story WHAT I KNOW OF YOUR COUNTRY
Kit Coyne Irwin, writer of the flash fiction piece PARROT TALK

Please e-mail me at your soonest convenience: dimestories@gmail.com