What I'm Reading

The Farm on the River of Emeralds is the second of Moritz Thomsen's memoirs, the first two of which are set in Ecuador where he lived in the last several decades of his life.

His first book, Living Poor, recounts his time in the Peace Corps in the 1960s. He joined up when he was in his fifties after failing as a farmer in Northern California.

The book I am reading tells the story of the four years in which he co-owned a farm on the Esmeraldas River in NW Ecuador near the coast. This was close to where he served in the Peace Corps.

Thomsen was a beautiful writer, and the stories he tells are mostly sad stories of failure. But he provides a lot of information about Ecuador, especially the NW part where he lived. Thomsen died in 1991 of cholera. His books are kind of forgotten, I think, which is too bad. I suggest you start with Living Poor if you want to sample his writing.