Around the Bend

Wade Davis begins his book Magdalena near the mouth of Colombia’s principal river, in Bocas de Ceniza on the northern coast, on a jetty that extends many kilometres into the Caribbean Sea. Men and women who work the surrounding waters live in shacks that precariously line the breakwater, and on their bleached walls, they’ve painted humble poetry that praises the fishing, the peace, and the sound of the waves. A narrow-gauge railway line runs between the small houses, carrying local tourists looking for the sun and perhaps a cone of shaved ice. The trains occasionally derail, and if someone has a cassette player with them, a dance might break out. But no one drinks from the toxic waterway, which is “contaminated by human and industrial waste.” Some will not even eat the fish. They remember when bodies once floated down the “graveyard of the nation.”

Many of the themes in this heartfelt and sprawling book can be glimpsed on that jetty: human violence, hubris...