At Play in the Fields of the Lord

Written by Peter Matthiessen

Narrated by Anthony Heald

In a malarial outpost in the South American rain forest, two misplaced gringos converge and clash. Martin Quarrier has come to convert the fearful and elusive Niaruna Indians to his brand of Christianity. Lewis Moon, a stateless mercenary who is himself part Indian, has come to kill them on the behalf of the local comandante. Out of their struggle Peter Matthiessen has created an electrifying moral thriller, a novel of Conradian richness that explores both the varieties of spiritual experience and the politics of cultural genocide.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blackstone Audio
• Release date: Oct 22, 2009
• ISBN: 9781433299889

Peter Matthiessen

Peter Matthiessen is a three-time National Book Award-winning American novelist and nonfiction writer, as well as an environmental activist. His nonfiction has featured nature and travel, as in The Snow Leopard, or American Indian issues and history, as in his detailed study of the Leonard Peltier case, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse. He lives with his wife in Sagaponack, New York.

Reviews for At Play in the Fields of the Lord

[alexandriaginni · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

After 50 pages, I'd had enough.

[stbalbach_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Although written in 1965 (when Matthiessen was 38) the novel still remains vibrant and relevant, its staying power attested by its transition to film almost 30 years later in 1992. Even though it would seem almost un-filmable, the director did a good job, carried in part by the beautiful photography of the Amazon. The book is basically about the extinction of a smaller culture by a larger more powerful culture - it is no accident the main characters are Jewish and Navajo Indian, two cultures that have historically successfully resisted attempts at genocide. Matthiessen was active with indigenous peoples in the Amazon when he published the non-fiction book "The Cloud Forest" in 1962, just a few years before "Fields of the Lord", the two works can be profitably be read in conjunction as both biographical of Matthiessen's evolving views and understanding of the culture and geography.

[kambrogi_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I chose this for a book/movie club because I liked the movie so much, but as the film turned out to be 3+ hours long, we chose The Mission to view. Both are typical missionary-mercenary stories, where people tamper with primitive cultures for different – usually selfish -- reasons (example: Poisonwood Bible). The book starts very slowly, and is a rather negative take on missionaries, but by the sixth chapter it gets into gear, and I found it very thought-provoking, exploring issues of faith, identity and culture from the point of view of missionaries (both Catholic and fundamentalist, American and non-), government officials, and most especially the compelling native American mercenary character who is adrift in every world: Louis Moon.

[nicholaspayne · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Matthiessen writes intelligently, but never quite captures me, but never would I say he isn't worth a read.

[hayesstw_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Two American Protestant missionaries and two mercenaries try to change the life of an Indian tribe in the Amazon jungle, and are changed themselves in the process. An administrator tries to use them for his own purposes.

[ridgewaygirl · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I've wanted to read this book since I saw the movie version, several years ago. In it, Peter Matthiessen tells the story of what happens when a group of American Protestant missionaries come to a remote outpost on a tributary of the Amazon river. There they clash with a pair of American mercenaries trying to get their passports back from the military leader and earn enough money to fill the tank of their airplane with gas so they can leave. The military leader is looking for an excuse to wipe out an unruly indigenous group, the Niaruna. In At Play in the Fields of the Lord, Matthiessen demolishes the idea of the White Savior rescuing a minority group through selflessness and dedication. While there are several important characters, the two who are the most interesting are Martin Quarrier, a selfless and self-examining missionary who really wants to understand the Niaruna, and to protect them from the forces threatening them, from annihilation by the government to the missteps of missionaries who break-down tribal ties and encourage dependency, and Lewis Moon who, because he half Native American, has never found himself belonging anywhere. In the Niaruna he sees what might have been for his own culture and so is determined to join the Niaruna and to guide them in how to avoid assimilation. Through the prism of the mist, the heat of the low jungle sky seemed to focus on this wretched spot, where tarantulas and scorpions and stinging ants accompanied the mosquito and the biting fly into the huts, where the vampire bats, defecating even as they fed, would fasten on exposed toes at night, where one could never be certain that a bushmaster or few-de-lance had not formed its cold coil in a dark corner. In the the river, piranhas swam among the stingrays and candirus and the large crocodilians called lagartos; in adjacent swamps and forests lived the anaconda and the jaguar. But at Remate de Males such creatures were but irritants; the true enemies were the heat and the biting insects, the mud and the nagging fear, more like an ague, of the silent hostile people of the rain forest.While the Americans, despite bringing only harm, are portrayed with nuance and the Niaruna themselves with respect, the military commander, as well as the indians who support him and live in the town, are treated by Matthiessen with not much more than contempt. It would have been a stronger book had he been able to treat those living between the Americans and the Niaruna with the same complexity as the other characters. Still, At Play in the Fields of the Lord is a fascinating story of what happens when good intentions are not enough.