On a Saturday morning in May 1980, Melanie Bowen, a pretty 15 year old, ran down the stairs of her home, grabbed her leather jacket and crash helmet, yelled a goodbye, and then walked out of the front door into the sunshine for what was to be the last time in her life. This book is the true story of what followed.

In 1954, in a remote mountain village in South America, a little girl was abducted. She was four years old. Marina Chapman was stolen from her home and then abandoned deep in the Colombian jungle. That she survived is a miracle. Two days later, half-drugged, terrified, and starving, she came upon a troop of capuchin monkeys. Acting entirely on instinct, she tried to do what they did: she ate what they ate and copied their actions, and little by little, learned to fend for herself. So begins the story of her five years among the monkeys, during which time she gradually became feral; she lost...