The Orchid Thief is Susan Orlean’s tale of an amazing obsession. Determined to clone an endangered flower—the rare ghost orchid Polyrrhiza lindenii—a deeply eccentric and oddly attractive man named John Laroche leads Orlean on an unforgettable tour of America’s strange flower-selling subculture, through Florida’s swamps and beyond, along with the Seminoles 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. In this new edition, coming fifteen years after its initial publication and twenty years after she first met the “orchid thief,” Orlean revisits this unforgettable world, and the route by which it was brought to the screen in the film Adaptation, in a new retrospective essay.
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I really enjoyed this work in the sense I thought the subject matter was really interesting to read about, but I think it failed as a book in a lot of key ways.
All the individual tidbits of information were fascinating! I loved the deep dives into individual orchid fanatics, the history of South Florida both in its urbanization and relationship with Native Americans, but especially the bits about poaching and cloning orchids. I had NO idea it was such a huge and profitable business.
So the book didn’t fail in terms of having interesting stories to tell, but rather those stories were poorly organized. This book really lacked a strong skeleton to hang those cool stories from. Things jumped around a lot and this certainly wasn’t helped by the lack of chapters or explicit divides between sections of the book.
I think this story would’ve been much better told as a series of shorter stories! Like in a podcast format for example.
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