A young student of anthropology receives an offer she can't refuse: the chance to live among the PumE, a South American hunting-and-gathering people who call the tropical Venezuelan savannah home. During their time in the village of Doro AnA, the author and the principal researcher study a vanishing way of life in which cash money, the written word, automobiles, and airplanes are rare and frightening intrusions.

Adopted into a PumE family, Yu's informal and personal accounts of events during her two year stay sparkle with descriptive flourishes and turns of phrase as she describes...