GARDEN OF THE CONDORS

by Pamela Ann Davis

Synopsis of a Screenplay for a Feature Film

Dr. Greg Morton—quiet, charming, early thirties—is an oncologist teaching in the prestigious medical school at UCLA in Los Angeles. He has fallen in love with Maria Luisa Calderon (“Lulu” to friends and family), a beautiful and vivacious art history grad student, and now he is on his way to Lima, Peru to meet her family and celebrate his engagement to her. Although it was apparent in Los Angeles that she had a generous allowance, when Greg arrives and promptly finds himself caught up in a highbrow social whirlwind, he soon discovers that her family is among the wealthy ruling elite of Peru. Her stern father, Manuel Calderon, is a powerful general, and her mother, Isabel, is a spoiled, headstrong socialite from one of Peru’s oldest and most prestigious families.

Ensconced in their palatial home, Greg is assigned a personal valet, Raul Mendez, who, on the day of the engagement party, explains to him that a scar on his body is from a failed operation for terminal cancer which should have claimed his life three years ago, but thanks to the unconventional treatment he received from a woman doctor practicing in a small clinic in one of Lima’s poorest districts, he has been well for some time. His curiosity piqued, Greg determines to investigate this story as soon as possible. At the engagement party, Greg begins to realize that here in her native milieu Lulu seems somehow different—not the girl he fell in love with, a disturbing difference pointed up by his surprising meeting with her older sister, a lovely dark-eyed beauty, the illegitimate daughter of the general and a former household servant. The next day when Greg enlists Raul to guide him to the unusual clinic, he is stunned to discover that the woman doctor who cured Raul is none other than the sister he met at the party, Dr. Adriana Arredondo. Fascinated, he begins to volunteer at the clinic to learn about her treatment protocols and before long must come to grips with his attraction to her.

When Greg learns that Lulu’s father has his own plans for his future, he becomes very uncomfortable and eagerly grasps the opportunity to accompany Adriana and her team into the high Andes to the secret location where her amazing healing herbs are grown—an intense adventure which brings him into conflict with Fernando, Adriana’s former lover, once a medical student but now a notorious guerilla leader fighting government corruption. Still in love with Adriana, Fernando helps her when the expedition seems doomed and eventually, surmounting dangerous obstacles, they reach their destination—the garden of the condors where the medicinal herbs grow. Here it becomes apparent they must help the local villagers fend off murderous drug traffickers who want to take over the fertile land for their drug trade, and Greg finds himself in a desperate battle in which lives are lost.

Will he honor his commitment to Lulu? Will he return to the tranquility and security of his teaching position at UCLA? Or might there be another path for him?

Why Garden of the Condors?

My beloved brother is a doctor and healer known internationally for his outstanding research and development of plant medicines which he has gathered from around the world, often in the course of precarious adventures such as the expedition to the garden of the condors.