Leonardo, the narrator and protagonist, is a seasoned traveler and restless seeker who has journeyed across the Americas and the Pacific-from Easter Island to the scattered isles of Polynesia. While reading Bruce Chatwin's In Patagonia, he stumbles upon a tantalizing rumor: that ancient Polynesians once sailed eastward, landed in a remote Chilean fjord, crossed the mighty Andes, and settled deep in Patagonia.
A lifelong history enthusiast, Leonardo recalls Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki theory-that South Americans may have reached Polynesia by raft. But what if the migration ran the other way? What if Polynesians-legendary navigators of the sea-reached South America long before European explorers?
Driven by a desire to uncover lost truths, Leonardo sets out on a solo expedition into Patagonia's wild heart. What begins as an intellectual quest soon descends into a harrowing physical and spiritual ordeal. Captured by mysterious people with sun-worn skin, he is blindfolded and transported across the arid, hostile pampas to a lush, hidden valley-enclosed by sheer cliffs, cloaked in a sky of perpetual white cloud, and dominated by a vast lake of geothermally warm water. Towering statues stand guard on a dam at its edge, their weathered faces hauntingly reminiscent of the moai he once saw on Easter Island.
With no chance of escape, Leonardo slowly adapts to life in this secretive community. He forms friendships, falls in love, and begins to document their world, piecing together oral histories of a miraculous migration from Polynesia via Easter Island to this secluded valley.