Awa is eleven years old and lives in an Amazonian village on the banks of the Amanarï River. When the river turns gray and the children fall ill, her grandmother Yawari entrusts her with a mission: to cross the forest to the Tree of Ancestors to pick the Orchid of Life, the only plant capable of purifying the water poisoned by mercury from illegal gold miners.
Accompanied by Kuma the jaguar, Lento the seventy-year-old sloth, Roméo the diplomatic capybara, Azul the blue macaw, and Boa the solitary anaconda, Awa embarks on a seven-day journey through a dense, dangerous, and extraordinary forest. Fiery rapids, bala ants, carnivorous plants, the cliff of wild winds, a lake of giant water lilies, fire, flood?each obstacle transforms the girl she was at the start.
At the end of the path, an Orchid, a Source of Light, and a discovery: the forest doesn't need to be saved by heroes. It needs guardians?people who listen to it, who learn its name, and who decide it's worth keeping alive.
