![]() The “After” chapters lose believability in their setting. The “Before” chapters are particularly powerful. When tragedy strikes, Cat realizes one cannot run away from grief. In Calantes she also falls in love and awakens to her sexuality. ![]() ![]() The “After” chapters take place mostly in Calantes, the titular Amazonian “undiscovered country,” where Cat finds that her fellow teen volunteers are, like her, motivated not by altruism but by the need to escape their own demons. This poignant story is told in alternating chapters labeled simply “Before” and “After.” The “Before” chapters tell the story of Cat, a white teen struggling through her senior year, juggling schoolwork, and bit by bit becoming the parent to her parents as her mother is diagnosed with a cancer that will eventually take her life and her father sinks into a paralyzing depression. After losing her mother to cancer, a teenage girl seeks escape from her grief by joining a volunteer organization in a war-torn South American country. ![]()
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