ENTERTAINMENT

Kira Salak's debut novel, The White Mary, takes readers on a war correspondent's lonely quest for a symbol of humankind's redemption.

Boston-based magazine writer Marika Vecera is taking time off from covering war in order to develop a relationship with Sebastian "Seb" Gilman. She's also writing a biography of Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent Robert Lewis, who has committed suicide. But in the midst of her research, someone claims to have seen Lewis alive in Papua New Guinea.

If he is dead, could his suicide be linked to the atrocities he has seen around the world? If he's alive, did he fake his own death, and why? Marika realizes that to get past the horrors she, too, has seen, she must find out what happened to Lewis. With a guide named Tobo, she sets off across Papua New Guinea in search of answers.

Ms. Salak, a contributing editor for National Geographic Adventure magazine, was the first woman to travel across Papua New Guinea. Her nonfiction account of the journey, Four Corners, was a 2001 New York Times Notable Book. She imbues Marika's trek through the same jungles with authenticity.

Marika, or the White Mary as she's called in indigenous pidgin, observes intense beauty in New Guinea:

All around them is unmolested jungle, resounding with bird calls and insect wails. Cockatoos and hornbills watch her fearlessly from the trees. Flocks of green and red parrots materialize from the forest only to resettle themselves and disappear again.

She also experiences misery:

There is only the wrenching pain in her guts, and the mad dashes to relieve her bowels. The nights are the worst, the pain and mosquito onslaughts keeping her from sleep. Tobo does what he can. Sometimes he sings to her. Often, he puts his mouth to her stomach to suck out the bad energy, spitting it over her shoulder.

Marika's strength and will are slowly worn down:

She grows progressively weaker, even as she manages to hoist herself up the mountainsides, her feet and legs torn and punctured, the wounds slow to heal. Heat headaches become part of the grueling ritual, and she follows Tobo until she feels too dizzy or worn out to continue. He has to constantly scold her now, pushing her into streams to cool her off and spur her forward.

Ms. Salak has covered conflict in Bangladesh, Borneo, Rwanda and eastern Congo, making Marika's war experiences sadly realistic.

"Colonel," Marika said as calmly as she could, "we're journalists. You have our press cards – " ... Katembo smacked her across the face, and her lip struck her teeth. She tasted blood, felt stinging aftershocks of pain.

Other scenes are horrifying in their unflinching honesty. Paradoxically, they make The White Mary a book of our time.

The story's weak point is Seb, whose fairy-tale quality makes him come across as an ideal of a man rather than the real thing. Does this reflect the author's need for an antithesis to the evil she has seen, or is it simply a first-time novelist's error?

Either way, it's forgivable in a book that otherwise beautifully explores the soul's ability to keep hope alive in a world where violence is the norm.

Beatriz Terrazas is a Dallas-based freelance writer and photographer.

Kira Salak

(Henry Holt and Co., $25)