Writing openly about his struggle to understand himself and find his place in the world, THE WAY AROUND is the captivating story of David Good’s parents -his American anthropologist father and his mother, a tribeswoman who could not fully adapt to Western life; of moving between the wilds of the Amazonian jungle to the paved confines of suburban New Jersey; of his mother’s abandonment and the harmful effect it had on his young self; of his rebellious teenage years marked by depression and drinking, and the near fatal car accident that transformed him and gave him purpose, leading him back to his mother in the Amazon twenty years later!!
In 1975 David Good’s father Kenneth Good travelled to the Amazon jungle as a graduate student to study the isolated Yanomami tribe—a people then virtually untouched by western civilization. To better understand the Yanomami, Kenneth spent several years among them, learning their language, studying their ways, and participating in their culture. Eventually he became a familiar and trusted presence within the community. So much so, that the village leader declared Kenneth “one of them” and insisted he take a wife.
Yarima (a name Kenneth gave to his betrothed wife) and Kenneth developed their relationship over the course of his ongoing assignments in the Amazon. Sometimes gone for months or years at a time, Kenneth found it increasingly more difficult to leave Yarima. After learning that she was pregnant—and nervous about the care she would need as well as the troubling Venezuelan political environment—they headed back to the United States where David was born.
Looking back on his mother’s first years in New Jersey, David remembers that she was “happy, smiling, and wide-eyed at the unfolding wonders of the world” around her. As David’s family expanded to include a sister and a brother, on the outside Yarima adapted to look like any other suburban mom. But over time she felt cut-off and alone. When the entire family travelled back to the Amazon to film a National Geographic documentary, then six-year-old David had no idea that his mother wouldn’t be returning to New Jersey with them.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: DAVID GOOD is a member of a remote indigenous tribe known as the Yanomami. He is the founder and executive director of The Good Project, a nonprofit service organization dedicated to the education, health care, and preservation of indigenous groups in South and Central America. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree in biological science and is a public speaker on the Yanomami and other indigenous tribes. He lives in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.

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