Death On the Amazon

In Death On the Amazon: My Memories of Eric Fleming, Lynne Garber’s romance with Hollywood star Eric Fleming bursts off the page. Fleming, the shining light of Rawhide, one of the most successful and loved TV westerns in history, his romance with former Miss Pennsylvania Garber, and his tragic death while shooting a movie in the Peruvian Amazon form the basis of Garber’s incredible story. But what she learned about Fleming, Hollywood, and beyond would have been too much even for an episode of Rawhide.

Garber’s memoir leaves no stone unturned. She debunks Hollywood and media myths about Fleming and his death. She reveals details about his drunken father who persistently beat him, and dives into his professional relationship with CBS, the network that produced Rawhide. Garber pulls the Eric she knew and loved from her memories, from his diary, and from the more than two hundred love letters he sent her during their time together.

But it is Fleming’s untimely and unnecessary death in the Amazon to which Garber leads us. Through the courting, personal histories, and devious contract dealings, the pieces that pushed Eric to the brink and led to him agreeing to run rapids raging so fast that even the local Amazonian elders shied away. Regrettably, Eric shot the perilous Huallaga River rapids and drowned. Weeks later, his battered body was recovered. He had been pummeled against boulders and ravaged by piranhas. Garber opens our eyes to the man behind the good looks and knowing glances of Rawhide trail boss Gil Favor.