Z: Beyond the Xingu is based on a true story of the search for a lost Amazonian civilization, interweaving the lives of two people who inhabit different worlds and eras. Percy Harrison Fawcett, the prototype for Indiana Jones, was a British Army officer posted to South America in the early 1900s to demark national boundaries during the rubber conflicts. Falling under the seductive and mystical spell of the rainforests, and drawing on his lifelong interest in archaelogy, he finds evidence of hidden ruins and becomes obsessed with belief in an ancient city he called "Z". Sylvia, a modern-day American, represents the many people whose lives have been strangely affected by the explorer and his quest. Her personal search for truth and meaning in Fawcett's mystery leads her to Brazil, where she, too, encounters the unexplainable and confronts elemental fears.
About the Author: Diana Ashley left her home state of Florida at an early age to live in New York City and later, Los Angeles, where she had small roles in films directed by Peter Bogdonavich, Roger Corman, and Randall Kleiser. She was a model in a Maybelline TV commercial that financed a long stay in Rome and travels throughout Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. She returned to Florida for a stint as on-camera co-host and associate producer of a daily live, news/public affairs TV show where she booked and interviewed Vera Miles, Lou Rawls, Washington columnist Jack Anderson, and others. In an abrupt about-face, she returned to college and majored in Education while living, hermitlike, in a snowy canyon near Sundance, Utah. Eventually she obtained a PhD from the University of Southern California in the field of Instructional Technology, afterward working as adjunct professor at several universities in California, and consulting in various sidelines, such as designing the technological portion of a Los Angeles Natural History Museum mobile exhibit, the Seamobile, a simulated submarine. By a fluke, she became interested- obsessed?- with explorer Percy Harrison Fawcett, and moved to Brazil, where she worked for two years as educational technologist in Rio de Janeiro. There she created video curricula and multimedia computer labs in nine schools of English and Portuguese, using her free time to travel throughout Brazil researching the story of Fawcett's quest for the ancient city he called "Z". Diana has also lived in French Polynesia and roamed far from the beaten path; she speaks Spanish, Italian, French, and Portuguese. Her current home is on the north coast of California where she teaches part-time at Humboldt State University, and wanders the redwood forests.