Bruchko: The Astonishing True Story of a 19-Year-Old American, His Capture by the Motilone Indians and His Adventures in Christianizing the Stone Age Tribe

During the first five or six years Olson is with the Barí, he has little contact with the outside world. However, while working on the translation of the Book of Mark, he brings a radio to the communal home. Newspapers seek to interview him as he rejoins society, and Olson claims he changed public perception of the Barí through these interviews. At about that time, a large prison break leads to many prisoners moving into Barí territory. They begin to contest the control of the area while other settlers vacillate between the two sides. Olson hopes that Christianity will mitigate the damage done by contact with the outside world, which has destroyed many tribes.

For Olson, something good comes out of contact with the outside world: Gloria. They meet first in 1965 after one of Olson’s trips to Tibú to collect medicine. She and her brother ask Olson if they can come into the jungle with him to help the Barí. Despite his initial resistance, he agrees to let them join, and once there, Gloria makes an impression on the Barí by her skill at spearfishing. When she is leaving, she asks Olson how she can help more, to which Olson says she will need to become a doctor to help with the medical facilities. Five years later, they meet again. It turns out Gloria has taken his advice and is studying medicine so she can help the Barí. From that point on, Olson visits her whenever he is in Bogotá and talks to her over the radio when he is not. Olson records one time when she tells him that she can only identify with the suffering of Jesus, not the love. She is worried that she cannot rise from her suffering as Jesus did. Olson comforts her by saying that she can by accepting God, as he will rise for her. Later, at a cathedral, she seems to have an experience similar to Olson’s boyhood revelation. To graduate from medical school, Gloria is required to give one year of free service to a rural region in Colombia. Gloria goes to the medical facility for the Barí established in Tibú, and within a few weeks, she and Olson are engaged.

When Olson is staying with Gloria in Tibú, he receives word that there has been a measles outbreak among the Barí. Olson gathers all the medicine he can, leaving the next day. Once he arrives at a communal home, he sees the extent of the outbreak; few seem to be healthy, most have been without food or water for around five days, and human waste is everywhere. With the help of Bobby and a few others, Olson treats as many as possible, resting for little more than three hours a night for the three weeks when the endemic is at its peak. Around 700 people are eventually treated for measles or its side effects, but amazingly, only one person, a little girl whom they treated, dies.

The next day, he leaves the jungle to try to raise funds for more medicine. When he returns, Adjibacbayra is deathly ill and falls into a coma-like sleep. Waking from it at one point, he tells Olson that he had a dream in which Jesus called him by his real name and told him to come home. He died after saying God was summoning him to a path he had not been before and Jesus, his true friend, was guiding him.

Jumping forward several months, Olson describes waking up one day to the sound of rain over the communal home. He has been spending his time since then with Gloria in Tibú, writing a linguistic paper on the Barí language, or relaxing with Bobby. Roughly an hour after he wakes up, he hears loud noises from outside. Two men in a canoe are shouting for help in crossing the river, which is unusually high because of the rain. When they are safely across the river and inside the communal home, they give Olson a packet of letters. He sees in the letters that Gloria has died in a car accident two weeks before. Olson wants to go to Bogotá, but the rain means they cannot safely go on the river.

By three o’clock in the morning, Olson decides he can no longer wait. He and Bobby set off downriver, but soon, a log knocks them into a whirlpool. Olson is unable to get back to the canoe and is only rescued when a Barí man holds a log out into the river for him to grab. By the time he is on the shore, Bobby and the canoe have both gone missing. Olson thinks that he has killed Bobby in his haste to get to Bogotá until he finally finds him downriver holding onto the canoe. The rest of the trip passes without further incident, and Bobby leaves Olson at the airport, asking him to pass on his condolences and come back soon.

Olson spends three days with Gloria’s mother and then flies back to the US for three weeks to discuss the publication of Bruchko. His return to Colombia marks the beginning of the book; Bobby picks him up from the airport, and Humberto Abril threatens to kill them for the cross. More threats follow for the next few months while Olson and Bobby continue the work of translating the Bible. When translating a section about dying in Jesus’s image, Olson becomes worried about Bobby’s fate, as Bobby says that he would die like Jesus.

Three quiet weeks pass, and Bobby goes downriver to sell bananas with two others. When they do not return, Olson joins a group that sets out to search. After a while of searching, they arrive at a different communal home, where they are told that Bobby has been killed and the people with him are badly hurt. A man named Israel had called Bobby to come over to him when he was going upriver. As Bobby docked, a man with a shotgun came out of the nearby trees. He struggled with one of Bobby’s companions and then shot Bobby and the third companion. Bobby fell into the river, and his two wounded friends saw him floating face down, but they could not get to him because more armed settlers emerged from the woods. They had been waiting in ambush for Bobby.

Olson tries to get the authorities involved. As he is going downriver, someone fires a shotgun at him, but it misses. The military and police are both uninterested in helping, so Olson goes back to the Barí. Throughout that night, settlers have been attacking Barí homes. Olson spends time searching for Bobby in case he is alive but eventually sees his corpse on the river. When they put Bobby’s body in the boat to take it away, they are again shot at, with Olson receiving a wound in the leg. As they arrive back at Bobby’s communal home, they see several hundred armed Barí who have come because of Bobby’s death. Bobby is buried in the traditional Barí manner, in a hammock put high in trees for vultures to eat. Olson watches the vultures devour the body, reflecting that he had thought the practice barbaric but now wishes to join Bobby. Many from the communal home gather, and Olson suggests they pray. Odo, Bobby’s adopted son, leads the prayer and describes Bobby’s role in spreading Christianity, agriculture, and medicine, ending with a request that Bobby’s legacy be continued through their lives. In a rare show of public grief, many in the crowd begin to cry, and one compares Bobby to Jesus: As Jesus died for all mankind, Bobby has died for the Barí.

For the next three weeks, Olson is stuck in the jungle while recovering. Many Barí trails have been booby-trapped, and people lay in wait on the river. When Olson leaves, he has to set out on a journey over the mountains. Halfway through the trip, he sees a helicopter that has been sent to collect him by the President of Colombia. He spends a week in Bogotá before meeting a government minister. The minister comforts him about Bobby’s death, telling him that Bobby’s role in spreading Christianity and development means that the Barí will have a better chance of fending off the settlers. Olson questions why working for God has proven so difficult and painful, but then sees a mental image of Jesus carrying the cross. He realizes that it was for the cross that he struggled.

The Epilogue was written 15 years after Olson went to South America. It summarizes how he converted the Barí and provides an update on what has happened to them since. By this time, Olson says there are 10 health centers, 2 clinics, 18 bilingual schools, and 11 agricultural centers. All are staffed by Barí, and seven children from the schools have been given scholarships to attend higher education. Olson thanks the Christians who have donated in some way to help his goals, telling them that with their help, 7,441 patients have been treated in Barí health facilities.

Olson ends the book with an anecdote: When Odo was in America, someone asked him the difference between their Jesus and his. He answered that the Barí Jesus does not live in buildings but is with them always.