Marching Powder

Imagine being thrown in jail only to have to purchase your own prison cell – and where there is even a five star rating system based on size and location of the cells.    A jail where the best cocaine on the continent is manufactured in-house, and where prison tours are given to visitors by the inmates.  Where restaurants and shops are opened and run by prisoners to sustain themselves and their families (who often live there).  And of course, a place where bribery will get you everywhere.

Welcome to San Pedro, a prison in Bolivia’s capital city of La Paz, and the setting for Marching Powder – a thrilling true crime story about an apprehended British drug smuggler (Thomas McFadden) and his five years spent surviving one of the continents most notorious prisons.

For any person who is thinking of traveling to South America, who has any interest in learning about South America, hell, if you’ve even heard of the continent of South America, then this book should be on your must-read list.  Even though Pete and I had lived in Bolivia for two months and thought we had a pretty good idea of how things worked (and didn’t work!) in that country, there were still some things in the book that shocked us.  And never mind the opinion of my relatively untraveled Mom, who read it in record time and repeatedly exclaimed: “OMG!  This story is just so unbelievable!”

You’re right Mom, it is pretty “unBoliviable”.  (I did not just make that word up, we actually heard it being used while we lived there).

Read it, and be absorbed in a gripping real-life story from inside a third world country prison. And buy it from our online shop!