A coming of age self-discovery story of frantic survival, the value of diversity, and dependence on one another. Fifteen-year-old Karen Herber is exactly where she wants to be-in the Nicaraguan rainforest with a volunteer medical team. What she had not expected was a hurricane collapsing a bridge to wipe out her team and a mudslide burying a village. Only a Nicaraguan six-year-old girl and a forty-four-year-old woman with both arms broken survive the mudslide. Then she finds that Jaydon Bonner survived, a privileged, arrogant seventeen-year-old American tenderfoot. Academic and confidence concerns are already dragging Karen down and she was tagged a "weak leader" in Outward Bound School. Her doctor parents are pushing her into a medical career, of which she's uncertain. Less than fluent in Spanish, but an experienced backpacker, the reluctant leader is challenged by nature, animals, desperate men, and her fellow survivors' mistrust and cultural differences. Their only path to salvation is a risky boat trip down a rainforest river, 150 miles to the mysterious Mosquito Coast. Karen soon finds her companions' experiences, so different from her own, invaluable with each deadly encounter forging a closer bond between them.