It depicts an expedition to the Amazon River to capture animals for their father's wildlife collection business.

Dorothy Hinman, reviewing the book for Elementary English in February 1950, wrote:The authentic experiences presented by Willard Price in this account of a trip through the Amazon jungle in themselves would offer to an adult sufficient excitement.

In this text the Amazon is a phantasmagoria of man-eating piranhas and anacondas that lie in wait to devour the hapless adventurers.

Needless to say, the resourceful boy heroes see their way through this challenge while their "native" manservants perish horribly.

"[3] Referencing the passage where the Hunts purchase a shrunken head for museum display, Sandra Pannell notes the novel's "themes of collecting and cultural hegemony, appropriation and aesthetization".