The Orchid Thief - by Susan Orlean (Paperback)

About the Book

The orchid thief is John Laroche, a renegade plant dealer and sharply handsome guy in spite of the fact that he is missing all his teeth and has the posture of al dente spaghetti. This national bestseller follows him into the Florida swamp to relate his mesmerizing true story of beauty and obsession.

Book Synopsis

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK - THE BASIS FOR THE FILM ADAPTATION DIRECTED BY SPIKE JONZE AND STARRING NICOLAS CAGE AND MERYL STREEP

The "eccentric, illuminating, [and] hilarious" (New York Daily News) true story of beauty and obsession in the swamps of Florida and the impassioned individuals who risk everything for the ultimate prize: a rare ghost orchid

"Fascinating . . . an engrossing journey [full] of theft, hatred, greed, jealousy, madness, and backstabbing."--Los Angeles Times

Meet John Laroche, a deeply eccentric and oddly attractive renegade plant dealer. In 1994, Laroche and three Seminole men were arrested with rare ghost orchids--Polyrrhiza lindenii--they had stolen from a wild swamp in South Florida. Laroche had planned to clone the endangered orchids and sell them for a small fortune to impassioned buyers.

In The Orchid Thief, acclaimed journalist Susan Orlean follows Laroche through swamps and into the eccentric world of Florida's orchid collectors, a subculture of aristocrats, fanatics, and smugglers whose obsession with plants is all-consuming. This unforgettable tour of America's strange flower-selling subculture becomes even more bizarre as Orlean details how the head of a famous Seminole chief came to be displayed in the front window of a local pharmacy, how seven hundred iguanas were smuggled into Florida, and the case of the only known extraterrestrial plant crime.

A modern classic of personal journalism, The Orchid Thief is a wickedly funny, elegant, and captivating tale of an amazing obsession.

Review Quotes

"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)

About the Author

Susan Orlean has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1992 and has also written for Outside, Esquire, Rolling Stone, and Vogue. She graduated from the University of Michigan and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. She now lives in Los Angeles and upstate New York with her husband and son.