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Whatever the reason for their particular appeal, orchids, since their arrival in America in 1838, have come to symbolize elegance. Yet essayist Susan Orlean uncovers the rough drama behind the flower's history, recounting tales of paid professional hunters who met their deaths through drowning, fever, and murder in locales like Bhamo, Myanmar, Panama, and Ecuador. Contemporary Florida, it turns out, is a hotbed for the shady side of orchid mania, and it is there that Orlean meets the "thief" of her title, John Laroche. A reckless iconoclast, Laroche is an orchid breeder who gleefully cooks seeds in his microwave. After the wealthy Seminole tribe hires him to run a nursery, he concocts a grandiose scheme to obtain a rare "ghost" orchid from the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve and clone it. The slight hitch is that, under Florida's Endangered Species law, it's illegal to collect wild orchids. The Seminoles, however, consider themselves at war with America, and Laroche enlists a few members to commit the actual theft, assuming that Native Americans are exempt from government law. After stuffing 200 orchids into pillowcases, Laroche and his cohorts are arrested, and Laroche is convicted.
Orlean hopes Laroche will offer her insight into orchid mania, and he makes a lively, contrary companion as he guides her through Florida's often bizarre botanical subculture. In Palm Beach mansions and low-rent bungalows, at conferences, galas, and greenhouses, she is introduced to devotees who regale her with accounts of rivalries and discoveries, of lives both ruined and enlightened by a passion for "the most compelling and maddening of all collectible living things." In the end, Orlean herself succumbs to orchid mania and makes a heart-of-darkness trek into the frightening Fakahatchee swamp, taking the reader on a fascinating journey in which obsession ultimately becomes, in her vision, an optimistic belief in "the perfectibility of some living thing" and its power to transform our lives.
USA Today
A lesson on the darkdangeroussometimes hilarious nature of obsession...You sometimes don't want to read onbut find you can't help it.
Detroit Free Press
Deliciously weird...luscious and oozy as a caramel left to sweat in the Miami sun.
Newsday
Damp heat, bugs, wild hogs, snapping turtles, poisonous snakes — and orchids...Wouldn't have missed it.
London Review of Books
...[F]ull of twists and turns....a fascinating account of one remarkable life form in pursuit of another, the cast of fanatics being as weird and wonderful as the hybrids themselves.
— Richard Rudgley
Salon.com
Susan Orlean, a New Yorker essayist, is fond of leafing through small-town newspapers. She knew she was on to something when she tripped over the following odd combination of words in a Florida daily: "swamp," "orchids," "Seminoles," "cloning," "arrest." The tiny news item, about an upcoming hearing for an accused rare-plant poacher, had "cool story" written all over it. And so, Orlean, a pale and completely unpretentious redhead who makes Maxfield Parrish's models look like she-bears, took off for Naples, Fla., to investigate. The scene was not exactly what she expected. Soon she was standing hip-deep in the steaming Fakahatchee Swamp beside the very man the fuss was all about, a driven, eccentrically charming weirdo who struck her as handsome despite his lack of teeth. Their quarry: the rare polyrrhiza lindenii, or ghost orchid, which is federally protected and grows nowhere else in the world.
John Laroche, the orchid thief, had been trying to spirit several pillowcases full of ghost orchids out of the swamp when he was arrested. That's how he first made the papers. His three Seminole assistants were supposed to legitimize the theft, since the Fakahatchee is Seminole land. It's not surprising that he'd risk his neck in order to snag such booty. Propagating and selling ghost orchids -- as the botanically savvy Laroche was fully able to do -- would have made him very rich. What's especially strange about The Orchid Thief -- and it becomes increasingly fascinating as the story progresses -- is what a big deal orchids are. There's a rollicking history of orchidmania in here, if you can imagine such a thing, and a series of cameos depicting nurserymen and international smuggling. Ultimately, Laroche turns out to be just another nut in a long line of orchid nuts.
Orlean's buoyant, self-assured style makes the journey fun, especially when she's looking at the plants themselves, which are astonishing in their variety. "There are species that look like butterflies, bats, ladies' handbags, bees, swarms of bees, female wasps, clamshells, roots, camel hooves, squirrels, nuns dressed in their wimples, and drunken old men," she writes, particularly dazzled by a flower that looks like a pig on a swizzle stick. "People say a ghost orchid in bloom looks like a flying white frog -- an ethereal and beautiful flying white frog." Are we going to get to see one? There's real suspense around this question, and it lasts until the very last page.
— Sally Eckhoff
New York Times
...[A]rtful....her orchid story turns out to be distinctly "something more"....Ms. Orlean's portrait..allows the reader to discover...acres of opportunity where intriguing things can be found.
—Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
Entertainment Weekly
...[T]he portraits here are finely drawn and certainly a pleasure to read...
—Vanessa Friedman
New York Times Book Review
Stylishly written, whimsical yet sophisticated, quirkily detailed...It shows Orlean's gifts in full bloom. —Ted Conover
Fine Gardening
Thievery is one thing, but any gardener swept away by the beauty of a plant can understand obsession, especially when it takes the form of an absolute, unbearable need to possess some delicate charm. And that obsession to own runs deep in those consumed by the surreal beauty of orchids. Susan Orlean explores the obsessive nature of those passions in this fascinating story of treachery, greed, jealousy, and lust among orchid hunters and collectors in South Florida. It's a tale rife with fascinating characters, exotic locales, and oddities of all kinds.
— Steve Silk
Sally Eckhoff
Susan Orlean, a New Yorker essayist, is fond of leafing through small-town newspapers. She knew she was on to something when she tripped over the following odd combination of words in a Florida daily: "swamp," "orchids," "Seminoles," "cloning," "arrest." The tiny news item, about an upcoming hearing for an accused rare-plant poacher, had "cool story" written all over it. And so, Orlean, a pale and completely unpretentious redhead who makes Maxfield Parrish's models look like she-bears, took off for Naples, Fla., to investigate. The scene was not exactly what she expected. Soon she was standing hip-deep in the steaming Fakahatchee Swamp beside the very man the fuss was all about, a driven, eccentrically charming weirdo who struck her as handsome despite his lack of teeth. Their quarry: the rare polyrrhiza lindenii, or ghost orchid, which is federally protected and grows nowhere else in the world.
John Laroche, the orchid thief, had been trying to spirit several pillowcases full of ghost orchids out of the swamp when he was arrested. That's how he first made the papers. His three Seminole assistants were supposed to legitimize the theft, since the Fakahatchee is Seminole land. It's not surprising that he'd risk his neck in order to snag such booty. Propagating and selling ghost orchids -- as the botanically savvy Laroche was fully able to do -- would have made him very rich. What's especially strange about The Orchid Thief -- and it becomes increasingly fascinating as the story progresses -- is what a big deal orchids are. There's a rollicking history of orchidmania in here, if you can imagine such a thing, and a series of cameos depicting nurserymen and international smuggling. Ultimately, Laroche turns out to be just another nut in a long line of orchid nuts.
Orlean's buoyant, self-assured style makes the journey fun, especially when she's looking at the plants themselves, which are astonishing in their variety. "There are species that look like butterflies, bats, ladies' handbags, bees, swarms of bees, female wasps, clamshells, roots, camel hooves, squirrels, nuns dressed in their wimples, and drunken old men," she writes, particularly dazzled by a flower that looks like a pig on a swizzle stick. "People say a ghost orchid in bloom looks like a flying white frog -- an ethereal and beautiful flying white frog." Are we going to get to see one? There's real suspense around this question, and it lasts until the very last page.
— Salon
Brill's Content
...[A]n engrossing tale of eccentric ambitions....[A] vivid, sympathetic account.
— Matthew Heimer
Kirkus Reviews
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 craft a comprehensive natural and social history of what the Victorians called "orchidelirium." Orlean (Saturday Night) 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, Florida, 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 Manhattantownhouse; and of other floral fanatics.
From the Publisher
Stylishly written, whimsical yet sophisticated, quirkily detailed and full of empathy . . . The Orchid Thief shows [Orlean’s] gifts in full bloom.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Fascinating . . . an engrossing journey [full] of theft, hatred, greed, jealousy, madness, and backstabbing.”—Los Angeles Times
“Orlean’s snapshot-vivid, pitch-perfect prose . . . is fast becoming one of our national treasures.”—The Washington Post Book World
“Orlean’s gifts [are] her ear for the self-skewing dialogue, her eye for the incongruous, convincing detail, and her Didion-like deftness in description.”—Boston Sunday Globe
“A swashbuckling piece of reporting that celebrates some virtues that made America great.”—The Wall Street Journal
“Fascinating . . . a rare and exotic tale that shows a journalist’s gifts in full bloom.”—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Orlean is a superb tour guide through the loony subculture of Florida’s orchid fanciers, and a writer whose sentences can glow like rare blooms, as when she reports that the air above an orchid swamp’s sinkholes ‘has the slack, drapey weight of wet velvet.’”—Time
“A zestfully informative and entertaining read. Orlean’s writerly verve handily matches the passions of her orchid-lovers, in a book that positively blooms with exotic sights and eccentric personalities.”—The Seattle Times
“Uproarious or understated, [Orlean] often writes with a smile on her lips. And she’s game for anything. You have to admire an author who absolutely hates mucking around in scum-covered, alligator-infested waters, with companions as dubious as a work party from a local prison, yet does so to capture the story. And to deliver a priceless line: ‘I hate hiking with convicts carrying machetes.’ In Orlean’s position, hate was a perfectly understandable emotion. From where I sat, safe and dry in the reading chair of my orchid-free living room, a different feeling arose: Love at first read.”—San Diego Union-Tribune
“An eccentric, illuminating, hilarious book that is as bewitching as the rare specimens it describes.”—New York Daily News
“The delicate beauty of exotic blossoms inspires eccentric collectors and swamp-smart suppliers alike in this true-life South Florida smuggling mystery.”—People (“Worth a Look” feature)
