At Play in the Fields of the Lord

Set at a malaria-ridden outpost in the South American rain forest, Peter Matthiessen's 1965 novel brings two outsiders into conflict. Martin Quarrier, an evangelical missionary, arrives with his wife Hazel and son Billy to convert the Niaruna, an elusive Indian people living upriver. Lewis Moon, a stateless mercenary who is part Native American himself, has been hired by the local comandante to attack the same tribe from the air. From their opposing missions the book builds a moral drama about faith, spiritual experience and the cultural destruction of a people. It reached the final round of the National Book Award for Fiction, and Héctor Babenco adapted it for the screen in 1991.

Author and filmmaker Sebastian Junger recommended it in Tools of Titans.