The Orchid Thief : A True Story of Beauty and Obsession - Softcover

Orlean, Susan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 009928958X ISBN 13: 9780099289586

Publisher: Ballantine Books, Inc., 2000

Synopsis

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK
A modern classic of personal journalism, "The Orchid Thief" is Susan Orlean's wickedly funny, elegant, and captivating tale of an amazing obsession.
From Florida's swamps to its courtrooms, the New Yorker writer follows one deeply eccentric and oddly attractive man's possibly criminal pursuit of an endangered flower. Determined to clone the rare ghost orchid, Polyrrhiza lindenii, John Laroche leads Orlean on an unforgettable tour of America's strange flower-selling subculture, along with the Seminole Indians who help him and the forces of justice who fight him. In the end, Orlean-and the reader-will have more respect for underdog determination and a powerful new definition of passion.
Praise for The Orchid Thief:
"Fascinating . . . tales of theft, hatred, greed, jealousy, madness, and backstabbing . . . an engrossing journey."
"-Los Angeles Times"
"Irresistible . . . a brilliantly reported account of an illicit scheme to housebreak Florida's wild and endangered ghost orchid . . . Its central figure is John Laroche, the 'oddball ultimate' of a subculture whose members are so enthralled by orchids they 'pursue them like lovers.' "
"-Minneapolis Star Tribune"
"Artful . . . in Ms. Orlean's skillful handling, her orchid story turns out to be distinctly 'something more.' . . . [Her] portrait of her sometimes sad-making orchid thief allows the reader to discover acres of opportunity where intriguing things can be found."
"-The New York Times"
"Zestful . . . a swashbuckling piece of reporting that celebrates some virtues that made America great."
"-The Wall Street Journal"
"Deliciously weird . . . compelling."
"-Detroit Free Press"

About this title

Review

Orchidelirium is the name the Victorians gave to the flower madness that is for botanical collectors the equivalent of gold fever. Wealthy orchid fanatics of that era sent explorers (heavily armed, more to protect themselves against other orchid seekers than against hostile natives or wild animals) to unmapped territories in search of new varieties of Cattleya and Paphiopedilum. As knowledge of the family Orchidaceae grew to encompass the currently more than 60,000 species and over 100,000 hybrids, orchidelirium might have been expected to go the way of Dutch tulip mania. Yet, as journalist Susan Orlean found out, there still exists a vein of orchid madness strong enough to inspire larceny among collectors.

The Orchid Thief centers on south Florida and John Laroche, a quixotic, charismatic schemer once convicted of attempting to take endangered orchids from the Fakahatchee swamp, a state preserve. Laroche, a horticultural consultant who once ran an extensive nursery for the Seminole tribe, dreams of making a fortune for the Seminoles and himself by cloning the rare ghost orchid Polyrrhiza lindenii. Laroche sums up the obsession that drives him and so many others:

I really have to watch myself, especially around plants. Even now, just being here, I still get that collector feeling. You know what I mean. I'll see something and then suddenly I get that feeling. It's like I can't just have something--I have to have it and learn about it and grow it and sell it and master it and have a million of it.

Even Orlean--so leery of orchid fever that she immediately gives away any plant that's pressed upon her by the growers in Laroche's circle--develops a desire to see a ghost orchid blooming and makes several ultimately unsuccessful treks into the Fakahatchee. Filled with Palm Beach socialites, Native Americans, English peers, smugglers, and naturalists as improbably colorful as the tropical blossoms that inspire them, this is a lyrical, funny, addictively entertaining read. --Barrie Trinkle

From the Publisher

"The best writers make you care about something you never noticed before. Susan Orlean is a perfect example...In a dry reporter's style, spiked with wit and charged with infectious enthusiasm, Orlean explains orchid biology and traces the history of orchid hunting, scattering surprises as she goes....An endearingly timid explorer who shudders each time she lowers herself into the teeming ooze of the Fakahatchee, Orlean is also an acute observer of the personalities and rivalries she encounters...Orlean allows accidental discoveries and encounters to dicate the book's peculiar, engrossing course."
        --Anna Mundow, The New York Daily News

"Orlean's hilariously reported, discursive narrative wanders off into Seminole history, real-estate fraud, stolen flora, and the scary, swampy Fakahatchee Strand. Just when you fear you're lost in the Everglades, she returns to the flower at hand, and unleashes some delirious prose....Orlean shows great restraint and never adopts an orchid--readers may not manage to be so cold-blooded."
        --Alexandra Lange, New York Magazine

"Artful...In Ms. Orlean's skillful handling, her orchid story turns out to be distinctly 'something more.' Getting to know Mr. Laroche allows her to explore multiple subjects: orchids, Seminole history, the ecology of the Fakahatchee Strand, the fascination of Florida to con men....All that she writes here fits together because it is grounded in her personal experience...acres of opportunity where intriguing things can be found."
        --Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times

"The collecting mania that Susan Orlean has so painstakingly described is, like the orchid, a small thing of grandeur, a passion with a pedigree...Stylishly written, whimsical yet sophisticated, quirkily detailed and full of empathy for a person you might not have thorugh about empethetically...The Orchid Thief shows her gifts in full bloom."
        --Ted Conover, The New York Times Book Review

"Orlean writes in a keenly observant mode reminiscent of John McPhee and Diane Ackerman....In prose as lush and full of surprises as the Fakahatchee itself, Orlean connects orchid-related excesses of the past with the exploits of the present so dramatically an orchid will never just be an orchid again."
        --Booklist

"Orlean is a beautiful writer, and her story is compelling even for those whose knowledge of orchids is limited to the long-ago prom corsage. The Orchid Thief is a lesson in the dark, dangerous, sometimes hilarious nature of obsession--any obsession. You sometimes don't want to read on, but find you can't help it."
        --Anita Manning, USA Today

"If you liked MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL, this new nonfiction work by Susan Orlean will hold you utterly spellbound. Like many orchids, it's a beautiful hybrid: part crime story (about orchid poaching in the wild swamps of Florida), part exotic read (about a fanatic society of flower breeders). Led by the title character, a charismatic plant smuggler, you'll journey with Orlean through a strangely fascinating, almost mystical subculture."
        --Glamour

"Readers suffering from the impeachment blues can start the new year right with The Orchid Thief, a swashbuckling piece of reporting that celebrates some virtues that made America great. Here are visionary passions and fierce obsessions; heroic settings; outsize characters, entrepreneurs on the edge of the frontier, adventurers seeking the bubble reputation....Ms. Orlean, an intrepid sociologist among the orchid fanatics, is also a poetic observer of the Fakahatchee swamp. There's an offhand brilliance in her accounts of its weird beauty and discomforts. But the most compelling sections of this fascinating book deal with the orchids themselves....Zestful."
        --Frances Taliaferro, The Wall Street Journal

"The landscapes of John Laroche and the state of Florida elicit some of Susan Orlean's best writing....her ear for self-skewing dialogue, her eye for the incongruous, convincing detail, and her Didion-like deftness in description....Such rapturous evocations are reason enough to read Orlean's book."
        --Dean Crawford, The Boston Globe

About this edition

• Publisher: Ballantine Books, Inc.
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 009928958X
• ISBN 13: 9780099289586
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288