The riveting account of a girl who was abandoned in the jungle and lived among monkeys

In the early 1950s, in a remote mountain village in South America, as a small girl Marina Chapman was abducted while picking pea pods near her home. Her kidnappers then abandoned her deep in the Colombia jungle, and for approximately the next five years she lived with a troop of capuchin monkeys, eating what they ate, copying what they did, and gradually becoming feral.

Eventually, she was taken from the jungle by a pair of hunters and sold as a slave to a couple in the town of Cucuta who beat and tortured her. After she managed to escape, she spent several years as a street child before being taken in by a family of criminals. Finally, a sympathetic neighbour arranged for her to go live with her daughter in safety in Bogota.

The Girl with No Name tells this spellbinding story in vivid detail-from the enchantment of the shady garden where Marina was kidnapped to the dappled darkness of her jungle home to the hunger, poverty, and pain of her existence in Cucuta. The book also offers a rare and fascinating glimpse into the world of capuchin monkeys. This is a unique and inspiring story of abandonment, despair, and eventual happiness.

Marina Chapman lives in Bradford, U.K. She plans to donate her share of the profits from the publication of this book to charities that combat human trafficking, child slavery, and abuse in Colombia.

Marina Chapman's profile page

Lynne Barrett-Lee was born in London and now lives in Cardiff, Wales. She is the author of seven novels and has ghostwritten several works of non-fiction.

Lynne Barrett-Lee's profile page