Holly FitzGerald of Dartmouth, author of Ruthless River: Love & Survival by Raft On the Amazon’s Relentless Madre De Dios, will present a slide show and discuss her book at 4 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 9 at the Clare T. Carney library at UMass Dartmouth.

Her book details a time when she and her then new husband survived a plane crash, only to build a log raft, take it downriver on the Amazon for hundreds of miles through Peru and Bolivia. 

They reached a dead end where only four logs separated them from waters infested with caimans and piranhas. They were forced to swim to survival.

The book, which comes from FitzGerald’ diary of the adventure, has been optioned for a movie. 

FitzGerald has worked as a family therapist and then taught employment skills at Bristol Community College.