26 Apr Lost in Shangri-La
(2011) On May 13, 1945 a U.S. C-47 plane called the Gremlin Special crashed on the island of New Guinea. This nonfiction book by Mitchell Zuckoff is the amazing story of the rescue of the survivors from a valley nicknamed Shangri-La.
I’ll be honest. When I first heard the title of the book made me think that it was another fantasy tale similar to the book Lost Horizon. Not at all! This Shangri-La was the name given to a practically unexplored mysterious valley. When the Americans took over New Guinea from the Japanese it became a popular flyover. The natives wore practically nothing and were rumored to be cannibals.
I won’t give the details away. What I enjoyed was the author’s description of the natives, the military rescue, the survivors. This was worldwide news at the time. A photographer parachuted into the island and made a documentary you can watch here.
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