Waking Up in Eden

May 18, 2009
An admitted news junkie, journalist Fleeson imagined she would die in the Philadelphia Inquirer’s
newsroom with a half-written story in her computer. But as the newspaper business began its cataclysmic shift in the late 1990s, she started to feel stymied and leapt at a fund-raising job with Hawaii’s National Tropical Botanical Garden. Arriving on the island of Kauai, she discovered that Hawaii’s native plants were becoming extinct at an alarming rate, with two-thirds in danger of disappearing by the end of the current century. Fleeson delves into conservation efforts—the history of the garden’s benefactors, two gay men with a passion for exotic plants and even more salacious parties during the years after WWII. She spotlights a full-time bartender who attempts to cultivate rare plants with basic greenhouse equipment. Finally, she shadows Kauai’s own “Orchid Thief”: the Robin Hood of Hawaii known for picking endangered plants in national forests and turning them into prized specimens on his own preserve. An artful and lively tale of flora and fauna illustrates their complexities and serves as a reminder of the need to nurture both.

April 15, 2009
Journalist Fleeson fashions a new life for herself at a Hawaiian botanical garden.

When the bean counters took over the Philadelphia Inquirer, the author knew her days were numbered. She nipped a potential midlife crisis in the bud by accepting an out-of-the-blue job offer to become a fundraiser for the National Tropical Botanical Garden (NTBG) in Kauai, Hawaii. Gardening had always been a passion of hers, and here was a chance to make an impact. As her new boss and friend, colorfully irrepressible botanist Dr. Bill Klein, said,"It's the nature of gardeners to take these disasters and improve on them." He might have been speaking of Fleeson's life, but he was actually referring to their task of getting the NTBG back on its feet after many moribund years and a devastating hurricane. Fleeson sets forth in appealingly bald language the events of her days: learning the ropes at work, delving into the history of the botanical garden, maintaining her love life, pursuing the island's more telling stories. She downplays her emotions but doesn't scant the intimacy of her role as participant, chronicling missteps aplenty while she negotiates her way through the cultural pitfalls of both her new job and Hawaiian society. Fleeson's descriptive talents come to the fore as she summons the pungent dilapidation of her surroundings and the drama of the landscape,"a fertile universe, primordial and undisturbed." She shows finesse in making vest-pocket stories of her investigations: the controversy over native vs. exotic species, Isabella Bird's Hawaiian sojourn, the role of plate tectonics in Hawaii's geology, profiles of the men whose estate became the NTBG and island biogeography and extinction. Additional subjects include death, politics and eating mangoes in the nude.

A surviving-middle-age story that artfully blends the intriguing world of natural science with the theater of human foibles.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

May 1, 2009
Fleeson could see the handwriting on the wall: big changes were coming to the metro newspaper where shed worked hard to build a solid career, and it seemed wise to get out while the getting was good. Fleeingto Kauai to become the chief fund-raiser for the beleaguered National Tropical Botanic Garden, she found herself plunked down in the middle of paradise, which turned out to be not quite the utopian sanctuary one would imagine. Her boss was a mercurial whirling dervish of ego and ambition, her accommodations were rustic and remote, and the islands fragile habitat was more threatened than she ever imagined. Confronted with overwhelming evidence of the alarming rate of plant extinction caused by nonnative species invading Kauai, Fleeson becomes a tireless champion of its salvation. As she delves deep into the islands history and ventures far into its delicate ecosystem, Fleeson undertakes her own personal and professional salvation, a spirited and daring pilgrimage that is both revelatory and enlightening.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)