Nelly Louise: Orinoco Dorado is a book written by José María Aristimuño. It is available on Amazon. As the Nelly Louise cut through the dark waters, its passengers formed a microcosm of fate, each carrying a purpose, a longing, or a secret buried deep within.
Among them was a striking red-haired lady of noble lineage and unyielding will, whom even Her Majesty Queen Victoria, through the British government and its diplomatic mechanisms, had entrusted with a stipend to support the necessary funds to locate the colonel—alive or dead.
The memories of joy, security, and well-being in London were locked away in the chest of oblivion. What was at stake was precious, grand, and tied to the prestige of the British crown. Each passenger bore their own apprehension, as everyone carried different weights and circumstances that had brought them to this river, an environment of overwhelming nature capable of altering the emotions of all aboard.
Without a word, Sara stood up under the captain’s watchful gaze and made her way to the dining room, decorated in pure English style. Chippendale chairs stood atop an antique Persian rug, adorned with predictive arabesques. She glanced through the window, seeking an escape, toward the deck and beyond to the idyllic waterscape.
There, the somber green of the shores was now bathed in pink hues as the afternoon began to fade.
Around her, other passengers harbored their own reasons for the journey—some shrouded in secrecy, others steeped in personal quests.
A German botanist sketched out delicate flora in his journal, his fingers smudged with charcoal from countless studies of jungle vegetation.
A Portuguese trader, whose gold-rimmed spectacles framed eyes of eternal scrutiny, whispered hushed dealings in the corners of the deck.
A French adventurer, dressed in a light linen suit, sipped his brandy with the nonchalance of a man who had seen both fortune and ruin more times than he cared to count.
Though they did not yet know it, their fates were bound together on the course of the river, where the unknown loomed ahead like an uncharted map, and the past clung to them like shadows in the mist.
