Cariocas in America

By Phillip Shelton

High profile brother and sister from Rio de Janeiro travel to the mountains of North Carolina, at the invitation of a wealthy family from Atlanta. Carla is beautiful, an equestrian and famed actress, her brother Godofredo is dashing, but he has a dark past in Brazil that is catching up to him, and he disappears along the Appalachian Trail. Globetrotter Donovan Fox is called in to find Godofredo, and becomes entwined with the high powered families in both countries as they confront the new realities of their loved ones...and Donovan reflects upon the journey that has brought him to this task.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Phillip Shelton
• Release date: Oct 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310264153

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Cariocas in America

Phillip Shelton

Published by Phillip Shelton at Smashwords

Copyright 2014 Phillip Shelton

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters locations, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Geography and science have been altered to suit the storyline. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, is coincidental.

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This work remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. Thank you for your support.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CARIOCAS in AMERICA

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Epilogue

CARIOCAS in AMERICA

2001

Margaret Mitchell may not have known it at the time, but in Gone With The Wind she authored a veritable satire. Scarlett O’Hara made fanatical attempts to preserve a way of life that had been soundly rebuffed by outcry and by conquest. As time passes, Scarlett seems a more and more delusional character.

This thought reflected my dour mood on an overcast and chilly fall day, which to many people signals colorful foliage and happy holidays. To me it has always meant the end of summer and thus the end of sunlight and laughter, a spectacle of the transitory nature of life itself. Spring seemed a distant unlikelihood. I put down the book and frowned.

Against that background, the doorbell rang and my first interview began with Maria Carla Sousa de Fereira. The minute she started to speak, I pinned the accent down to Rio de Janeiro, an unmistakable Carioca intrusion of guttural slushes and sloshes favored by society. I talked for a while in Portuguese, offering the surprise of asking about beach erosion in Leblon. She lived along the water in nearby Copacabana, so I was pretty close. I imagined one of those regal penthouses at the top of a landmark building, overlooking a sea of evenly tanned flesh, matching sand, and cobalt blue water. Where else would they invent a bathing suit called fio dental (dental floss). Truth is, on this beach most of the girls are teens, but the grown-ups have all had plastic surgery, so it is not easy to tell which is which from any distance. One thing certain, pale, overweight gringos should stay away from places like that…

Carla was the winner of an indecipherable gene pool lottery made possible because Brazil is the ultimate melting pot. This has created all kinds of unique physical features, some of which are utterly stunning. Carla was stunning. Straight jet black hair a mile long, café au lait skin, Royal Blue irises, the long, slender physique of an athlete, and mirabile dictu, a bum bum (pronounced boom-boom) that would be unforgettable making its way down the beach. Boom-boom. Boom-boom. Boom-boom. Brazilians are fixated on the gluteus maximus. She was very natural, needed no makeup, and used little. People like Carla are why Brazilians break with any pretense of sanctity and celebrate Carnival every year in ways that the uninitiated cannot begin to imagine. Not only that, but the uncensored acts of worshipping the female of the species at Carnival time, are broadcast live on national television, and the whole country watches, young and old. I have always wondered if the Pope knew this about one of his largest constituencies.

And here sat this splendid woman, simply dressed in a black leather pumps, razor creased black slacks, a cream colored silk blouse with plenty of décolletage, from which radiated a 4 carat aquamarine incased in yellow gold and diamonds suspended on an invisible necklace. These thoughts took a split second to go through my mind, and feeling better already, I got down to business.

"Entao, Carla. What can I do for you? My brother and I came to Atlanta last week to visit friends, then traveled with them to their retreat in North Carolina to see the Smokey Mountains. Godofredo is an experienced trekker, and decided to explore the Appalachian Trail on his own for a couple of days, in the Nantahala Forest. People do this all of the time I guess, but Godofredo did not come back. That was a week ago, and the authorities have been combing the area of Western North Carolina along with dozens of rescue volunteers and hounds. I doubt if he met with an accident or became lost, but that is what they expect happened. Godofredo hikes his way through remote places like the Amazon basin or