The Orinoco Uranium

“...an exciting tale rife with intrigue, adventure, and mystery.” — Wayne Abrahamson (US Navy, retired). Author of Black Silver and Sergeant Dooley and the Submarine Raiders.

Inspired by a series of true events and based on detailed research and personal knowledge of the history and geology of Venezuela, The Orinoco Uranium is a story of conflict and survival in WWII South America.

In the spring of 1944, a geophysical survey party detects a cargo of smuggled uranium on a stranded ship. Beached on the Orinoco River bank after a fierce storm, the ship was enroute from Nazi Germany to Argentina with radioactive metal stolen from a Berlin laboratory. The renegade German physicist behind the theft intends to use the cargo as a passport to a new life in South America.

American geologist Jerry MacDonald and his wife, Maria, are living and working in the scenic lakeside community of Maracaibo, a city of intrigue and espionage in neutral Venezuela. Looking for new oil felds, Jerry leads the geophysical survey party to the Orinoco River delta, deep in the South American wilderness. When he informs the American government about the strange discovery of the uranium upon his return to Maracaibo, the ensuing efforts to seize it by both Germans and Americans cause a violent encounter in the South Atlantic Ocean.