On a fantastic raft down the Amazon. Joam Garral is a plantation owner and becomes the captain of the Jangada, his elaborately constructed raft, which has space for his entire estate, including a church and workshops. Having fled Brazil a quarter of a century ago, where he was wrongfully sentenced to death as an alleged diamond thief, he embarks on a journey with his family from Peru along the upper reaches of the Amazon to Belém in Brazil at its mouth, to fulfill his daughter's wish to marry and to clear his name in court in Manaus. A silent and eerie passenger on his raft possesses a document that could prove his innocence - but in exchange, he demands the hand of Garral's daughter. It is a ciphered document that would need to be deciphered cryptologically, and with which the novel begins, is the key. "The Jangada" would not be a novel of Jules Verne's quality if the gripping adventure of life and death were not intertwined with the exploration of tropical nature and the wonders of the South American river that accompany the river travelers for 800 miles on the Amazon.