The Think Tank: 3

In 1966, Daniel McAuliffe accepts an assignment from a private American think tank-an organization willing to send its operatives where governments and corporations cannot openly go.His mission carries him from the docks of New Orleans to Panama and finally to Guayaquil. From there, he travels into the Ecuadorian mountains, exploring isolated farming communities and the rain forests of Ecuador and Colombia. Accompanied by Compeaché, a resourceful Indigenous guide with motives of his own, Dan confronts brutal roads, dangerous wildlife, desperate poverty, and people whose lives are controlled by forces far beyond their reach.He watches helplessly as the banana boys-undernourished children performing backbreaking labor for an industry that barely acknowledges their existence-struggle to survive. He is introduced to Pãlo, a fufurufa and the woman Compeaché loves. What begins as an exercise in observation and analysis gradually becomes a deeply personal test of Dan's endurance, judgment, and conscience.Stricken by illness and isolated far from help, Dan must trust strangers, an emergency beacon, and his own determination to survive long enough to return home.Set against the overlooked ports, mountain roads, jungles, and settlements of mid-1960s South America, The Think Tankis an atmospheric journey into a world where progress carries a human price-and where witnessing reality can change a man as profoundly as any act of heroism.A Daniel McAuliffe Series novel by Arthur Cofresi.