NEW YORK TIMES
BESTSELLER • A
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.