The Diary

Jack Martin is cleaning his attic one Saturday, as his teenage daughter wants to move up there and make it her room. He is making good progress and is almost through when he stumbles across an old Steamer trunk that belonged to his father, who is deceased. Jack and his wife Carol brought the trunk back after the funeral, put it in the attic and forgot about it. Jack figures that this is a good time to sort through the contents and opens the trunk. He finds that the contents are from when his father spent several years in South America looking for gold. Jack finds an assortment of well-worn clothes and other items. There are some knives, a Browning 9mm pistol, a portfolio with maps and photos, a leather pouch and a diary. The pouch contains some good-sized gold nuggets, some large emeralds and a shard of pottery with three lines of inscription. The diary leads Jack to South America to retrace his father's footsteps in a quest for gold, emeralds and other adventures related to the items found in the trunk.