Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Orchid Thief

The Orchid Thief

Orlean, Susan

Paperback

Biographies GeneralFlowersGeneral Fiction

Publisher Price: $21.00

ISBN10: 044900371X
ISBN13: 9780449003718
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: Jan 4 2000
Pages: 320
Weight: 0.63
Height: 0.70 Width: 5.46 Depth: 8.16
Language: English
Awards: Book Sense Book of the Year Award
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.

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