Now here is something you don’t get to read every day, an account of Jibaro life in Ecuador including their closely guarded secret of how to shrink a human head. Bob must have realized he was working with a delicate topic since he added the translator’s note, “Every man to his own opinion”. We are let in on a fascinating secret technique, explained with such gripping details that we can imagine we are with them in the remote jungle lean-to. We also get to see the Jibaro, what they believe, how they live, and their beauty and complexity. The character of Piruchicuna is representative of the Jibaro, and his narrator illustrates the Jibaro’s mysterious and brutal rituals of retaliation and head shrinking, and at the same time he attempts to convey an understanding of these people. The end result is a thought provoking and compelling narrative Bob translated from a fellow American he met while in Ecuador.