Tales from the Sharp End

Tales from the Sharp End: A Portrait of Chile is based on fifteen years of Natascha Scott-Stokes living and exploring the country of Chile. The book offers a vivid tapestry of stories ranging from history and culture to flora and fauna, woven into the author’s own tales of adventure and heartbreak.

Chile is 4,300 kilometers long but a mere 350 kilometers at its widest, lined by the Andes to the east and the Pacific to the west. Traveling along the Pan-American Highway takes you to both the driest desert on earth and impenetrable cloud forests barring the way to Patagonian ice fields. Here is the true magnet of this jagged knife-edge of a country: the unique landscape born of its geography and the gorgeous plant and animal life there. Few things are more thrilling than climbing the coastal mountains to see both the Andes and the ocean at the same time, or to set eyes on the mighty River Baker churning through southern Patagonia.

Natascha Scott-Stokes offers both a love letter to Chile and a heartfelt lament for a country living at the sharp end of human folly and climate change.

Acknowledgments
Introduction

Chapter 1. Heart of Darkness: The Conquistador Legacy
Chapter 2. Trails of Discovery
Chapter 3. The Poison Chalice: Women in History
Chapter 4. The Limache Valley
Chapter 5. Riches from the Sea
Chapter 6. The Flowering Desert: The Norte Chico
Chapter 7. 2010 Earthquake
Chapter 8. Sundays with Don Guido
Chapter 9. Rapa Nui (Easter Island)
Chapter 10. Mummies in the Desert: The Norte Grande
Chapter 11. Silence: The Undigested Past
Chapter 12. Gracias a la Vida
Chapter 13. Señora Gilda: Poverty in Person
Chapter 14. In the Land of the Monkey Puzzle Tree
Chapter 15. The Open Wound of the Araucanía
Chapter 16. Araña de Rincon: The Spider in the Corner
Chapter 17. Patagonia
Chapter 18. The Unluckiest Botanist in the World
Chapter 19. September 11
Chapter 20. House of Shame: Domestic Violence
Chapter 21. Robinson Crusoe Island (Juan Fernández Archipelago)
Chapter 22. Chile Rising, or the Estallido Social
Chapter 23. Paradise Valley: Valparaíso
Chapter 24. The Right to Live in Peace
Chapter 25. Crossroads
Chapter 26. Water
Chapter 27. The 2020 Plague Year
Chapter 28. Cambia Todo Cambia: Everything Changes
Postscript

Notes
Select Bibliography