The Orchid Thief

Author:   Susan Orlean
Publisher:   Vintage Publishing
Edition:   New edition
ISBN:  

9780099289586


Pages:   368
Publication Date:   04 May 2000
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   To order   Availability explained
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The Orchid Thief


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Overview

Intrigued by the case of a Florida flower-thief, Susan Orlean enters the extraordinary world of orchid-obsessives. Susan Orlean first met John Laroche when visiting Florida to write for the New Yorker about his arrest for stealing rare ghost orchids from a nature reserve. Fascinated both by Laroche and the world she uncovered of orchid collectors and growers, she stayed on, to write this magical exploration of obsession and the strange world both of the orchid obsessives and of Florida, that haunting and weird 'debatable land' of swamps and condos, retirement communities and real-estate scams. The world of the orchid hunters, breeders and showmen, their rivalries, vendettas and crimes, smuggling, thefts and worse provide the backdrop to a fascinating exploration of one of the byways of human nature, the obsessive world of the collector, and the haunting beauty of the flowers themselves.

Full Product Details

Author:   Susan Orlean
Publisher:   Vintage Publishing
Imprint:   Vintage
Edition:   New edition
Dimensions:   Width: 12.90cm , Height: 2.20cm , Length: 19.80cm
Weight:   0.255kg
ISBN:  

9780099289586


ISBN 10:   009928958
Pages:   368
Publication Date:   04 May 2000
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order   Availability explained
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.

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Reviews

Like the orchid, a small thing of grandeur, a passion with a pedigree . . . The Orchid Thief shows [Orlean's] gifts in full bloom. <br>--The New York Times Book Review <br> A LESSON IN THE DARK, DANGEROUS, SOMETIMES HILARIOUS NATURE OF OBSESSION . . . YOU SOMETIMES DON'T WANT TO READ ON, BUT FIND YOU CAN'T HELP IT. <br>--USA Today <br> 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.' <br>--Minneapolis Star Tribune <br> FASCINATING . . . TALES OF THEFT, HATRED, GREED, JEALOUSY, MADNESS, AND BACK-STABBING . . . AN ENGROSSING JOURNEY. <br>--Los Angeles Times <br> ARTFUL . . . In Ms. Orlean's skillful handling, her orchid story turns out to be distinctly 'something more.' . . . 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. . . . [Her] portrait of her sometimes sad-making orchid thief allows the reader to discover acres of opportunity where intriguing things can be found. <br>--Christopher Lehmann-Haupt<br> The New York Times <br> DELICIOUSLY WEIRD . . . COMPELLING. <br>--Detroit Free Press <br> ZESTFUL . . . A swashbuckling piece of reporting that celebrates some virtues that made America great. Here are visionary passions and fierce obsessions; heroic feats accomplished in exotic settings; outsize characters, entrepreneurs at the edge of the frontier, adventurers. . . . Orlean, an intrepid sociologist among the orchid fanatics, is also a poetic observer. <br>--The Wall Street Journal


Expanded from a New Yorker article, this long-winded if well-informed tale has less to do with John Laroche, the thief, than it does with our author's desire to croft a comprehensive natural and social history of what the Victorians called orchidelirium. Orlean (Saturday Night, 1990) piles anecdote upon detail upon anecdote - and keeps on piling them. Laroche, who managed a plant nursery and orchid propagation laboratory for the Seminole tribe of Hollywood, Fla., was arrested, along with three tribesmen, in 1994 for stealing rare orchids - endangered species - from the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve. He had intended to clone the rarer ones (in particular, the so-called ghost orchid ) and sell them on the black market. Always a schemer and an eccentric hobbyist (old mirrors, turtles, and Ice Age fossils all fascinated him), Laroche figured he'd make millions. Found guilty, he was fined and banned from the Fakahatchee; the Seminoles, ostensibly exempt under the Florida Indian statute concerning the use of wildlife habitats, pled no contest. But Laroche's travails form only the framework for Orlean's accounts of famous and infamous orchid smugglers, hunters, and growers, and for her analyses of the mania for the most compelling and maddening of all collectible living things. She traces the orchid's arrival in the US to 1838, when James Boott of London sent a tropical orchid to his brother in Boston. That collection would eventually be housed at Harvard College. Orlean includes passages on legendary hunter Joseph Hooker, eventually director of the Royal Botanical Gardens; on collectors, such as the man who kept 3,000 rare orchids atop his Manhattan townhouse; and of other floral fanatics. Enticing for those smitten with the botanical history of this sexually suggestive flower. As for everyone else, there's little or no narrative drive to keep all the facts and mini-narratives flowing. (Kirkus Reviews)


Staff writer for the New Yorker Orlean first encountered John Laroche's name in a 'short but alluring' newspaper item which alerted all her journalistic instincts. Laroche had been arrested for stealing wild, endangered orchids from a Florida swamp. He was apparently addiction-prone and orchids were his latest mania. This snipped led the author into a bizarre, sometimes frightening, world. Orlean writes with the crisp clarity of a journalist but the sensitivity of a poet and the book is packed with 'stories' about Florida itself, its other horticultural excesses and its very independent American-Indians. You don't have to be a plant person to be riveted. (Kirkus UK)


Author Information

Susan Orlean became a staff writer for the New Yorker in 1992 and has also written for Esquire, Vogue and Rolling Stone. She is the author of three other books of non-fiction.

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