Lost in Shangri-La

In the last couple of weeks I've read two books depicting important, sensational (at the time,) events in our history that I did not know existed.  The first was The Orphan Train.  It takes place in the late 1800s to around 1920 when trains  took orphans from the streets of New York and shipped them to farms and factories in the Mid West.  Not just a few, but over 200,000 children.

And now I've just finished reading Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff.  This is a true story about two soldiers and a WAC who were trapped in the jungle in New Guinea in 1944 - and their incredible rescue.

The woman was beautiful.  They were badly injured in an airplane crash; they encountered natives who were still living in the stone age, and all kinds of folks risked their lives to save them.

When they finally arrived back in the United States they were world famous, especially Margaret Hastings.

Margaret and Native Children

I loved the two Filipino medics who volunteered to risk their own lives by parachuting into the jungle and then hacking their way - for days - to the spot where the three were stranded.  If not for the medics, two of them would have died at that time.  Yes, Margaret was a dame with great gams but those gams were badly burned and full of gangrene.

I loved the interaction with the natives.  Natives who were primitive to the extreme but complex.  Yes they were cannibals.  Yes they went to war just for fun. - but they were happy.

Toward the end of the book I realized that I know a couple who spent 30 years in the mission field in that same area long after these events took place.  I hope the missionaries moving into that part of the world changed the native's lives for the better - but I'm not sure.

Lost in Shangri-La is a non fiction"man's book."  It has 58 pages of index notes in the back and lots of black and white photos.  Even I loved the detailed description of the eventual plane/glider set up they used to save the group.

An  exciting read, indeed!


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