Wildflower: An Extraordinary Life and Untimely Death in Africa
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- ISBN13: 9781400067367
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Product Description
Wildflower is a compelling work of narrative nonfiction in which the shocking death of a dedicated environmentalist becomes a broader tale of a gorgeous, breathtaking country in peril.
In January 2006, Joan Root, a sixty-nine-year-ancient naturalist, Oscar-nominated wildlife filmmaker, and staunch conservationist, was murdered by two masked men armed with an AK-47 before long after midnight in her bedroom on the shore of Kenya’s gorgeous Lake Naivasha. Was it a random robbery gone terrible, as the local police seemed to reflect, or was it a cold-blooded contract killing carried out at the behest of enemies Root had made in her efforts to protect Kenya’s wildlife? Veteran journalist Mark Seal set out to investigate this gripping real-life murder mystery–and as a replacement for establish an unforgettable tale not only of a tragic death but of the remarkable life that preceded it.
With compassion and an unswerving regard for the truth, Seal lays bare the deeply moving, inspirational history of Joan Root, covering her early days in Kenya as a shy young woman with an nearly mysterious ability to connect to animals; her cyclone courtship with the dashing Alan Root, their marriage, and the twenty years of nonstop adventure, passionate romance, and groundbreaking wildlife filmmaking that followed, both in Africa and around the world; the shattering disintegration of the marriage and partnership; and Joan’s triumphant struggle to reinvent herself as the protector of her lakeshore community’s fragile ecosystem–a struggle that would lead to her death.
Wildflower is also the tale of Kenya itself. A country blessed with unmatched beauty that is one of the last repositories of rare wildlife on the African continent, Kenya has also been scarred by decades of colonization and a culture of corruption fueled by the frequently competing agendas of conservationists and business interests. Joan Root dreamed of a bright future for Kenya and spent her life fighting with silent heroism and courage to make that dream a reality. Her life finished too soon, but her legacy lives on.
From the Hardcover edition.Amazon.com Review
Book Description
For readers of the bestselling White Mischief and Midnight in the Garden of Excellent and Evil–Vanity Honest contributing editor Mark Seal tells the mesmerizing tale of the captivating life and shocking death of world-renowned naturalist Joan Root.
From her passion for animals to her storybook like affair to her hard-fought campaign to save Kenya’s gorgeous Lake Naivasha, Wildflower is naturalist, filmmaker, and lifelong conservationist Joan Root’s gripping life tale–a stunning and moving tale featuring a remarkable modern-day heroine.
After twenty years of spectacular, unparalleled wildlife filmmaking together, Joan and Alan Root divorced and a fascinating woman establish her own voice. Renowned journalist Mark Seal offers this breathtaking, culturally significant portrait of a strong woman learning herself and fighting for her beliefs before her mysterious and brutal murder. With a cast of characters as wild, wondrous, and unpredictable as Africa itself, Wildflower is a real-life adventure tale set in the world’s quick-disappearing wilderness. Rife with personal revelation, intrigue, corruption, and murder, readers will remember Joan Root’s extraordinary journey long after they turn the last page of this utterly compelling book.
Mark Seal on Wildflower
The report was chillingly brief:
Conservationist Killed
Joan Root, animal lover and conservationist who collaborated with her spouse, Alan, on wildlife documentaries in the 1970’s, was killed on Jan. 13 in Naivasha, Kenya. Root was shot to death by assailants who invaded her farmhouse, the police said. Two men were arrested, officials said. One of the couple’s films, Mysterious Castles of Clay, narrated by Orson Welles, showed the inner workings of a termite mound. It was nominated for an Oscar in 1978.
As a contributing editor at Vanity Honest magazine, I am permanently in search of fantastic tales, and this one seemed to have plenty of the right ingredients: conservationist and wildlife filmmaker, nominated for an Oscar for a film narrated by the legendary Orson Welles, murdered for unknown reasons in Africa.
As soon as I started to research her, I quickly realized that Joan Root wasn’t just another wildlife filmmaker. She and her spouse, Alan Root, were, for a time in the 1970s and 1980s, the world’s greatest wildlife filmmakers, mythical facts to scenery lovers of all ages. You didn’t merely watch Joan and Alan on television and on flickering classroom screens across Africa and Fantastic Britain, you traveled with them, whether they were sporting with ferocious crocodiles and hippos in exotic lakes, sailing over Mount Kilimanjaro in a hot air balloon, or being chased, mauled, bitten, glow, and stung by every conceivable creature as they drove, flew, ran, and swam across Africa, determined to capture the continent and its wonders on film before this wild world was lost forever. They were pioneers, filming animal behavior lacking human interference decades before films such as Winged Migration and March of the Penguins were made. Their movies were regularly narrated by top movie stars, including David Niven, James Mason, and Ian Holm, and in 1967 one of their films had a royal premiere in London, where the couple was open to the Queen.
They introduced the American zoologist Dian Fossey to the gorillas she would later die trying to save, took Jacqueline Kennedy up in their hot air balloon, and covered much of Africa in their single-engine Cessna and their amphibious car. Then, for reasons the public never really knew, they suddenly vanished from the screen as mysteriously as some of the endangered species they had documented. They separated and later divorced. Alan, the more candid of the couple, went on to become a wildlife-filmmaking icon, winner of awards, tributes, and accolades. Meanwhile, blonde, bronzed, gorgeous Joan, who was intensely shy and permanently in the background, both as her spouse’s capable backup and the unheralded producer of their films, dropped out of filmmaking altogether, retreating to live alone on 88 acres in Naivasha, Kenya, where she devoted herself to saving the cost-effectively imperiled lake on which her land stood. It was there, in her bedroom at 1:30 A.M. on January 13, 2006, that she was cruelly murdered by assailants with an AK-47 automatic rummage though. Screaming in Swahili that they would fill her with so many holes she’d “look like a sieve,” they pumped bullets through the glass and the bars of her bedroom windows until Joan–who, at 69, had become one of the most indomitable conservationists in the world–lay dead in a pool of her own blood.
Within a week of reading the paragraph in the Times Digest, I had an assignment to write an article about Joan Root for Vanity Honest. After landing in Nairobi, I drove 55 miles west to Joan Root’s home on Lake Naivasha for her memorial service.
Thus started a three-year journey into the incredible life–and brutal murder–of Joan Root, a sweet and gentle woman, who rarely spoke above a whisper and had spent decades passionately helping the desperately poor and needy of Kenya. Some, including the police, were convinced that her murder was the result of a simple robbery attempt. But if robbery was the motive, others questioned, why was nothing stolen from her house? And why the barrage of bullets, when the threat of one would have persuaded most people in crime-ridden Naivasha or nearby Nairobi (which is known familiarly these days as “Nairobbery”) to surrender their cash? The likely explanation, many of her friends felt, was that Joan had been the target of a contract killing–easily arranged in Kenya for about $100 a hit–because of her conservation activities around the lake.
The article I wrote, which was published in the August 2006 issue of Vanity Honest, was just one more send off in the deepening mystery of a fascinating woman. Yet, like the chilling paragraph that had galvanized me in the beginning, the article seemed to make a visceral tie with readers. People would stop me on the street to chat about this indomitable individual. A dozen feature filmmakers expressed interest in obtaining rights to the article. Several publishers urged me to expand it into a book.
Most magazine tales tend to come and go, but this one wouldn’t die after the next issue hit the stands. It seemed to have a life of its own. Effective Title Films optioned the rights to the article for a feature film, with Julia Roberts set to co-produce and star as Joan Root, all of which was announced to fantastic flourish at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, building international headlines. Still, I thought the tale was over, at least for me. Joan Root was dead, and because she had rarely expressed her feelings, much less verbalized them, even to her closest friends, most of her personal tale was presumably buried with her.
Then something incredible happened. Joan Root started language, through hundreds of letters she had written to her mother, and a meticulously kept diary, in which she recorded her activities over the years. With these documents as my source materials, as well as interviews with persons who knew, loved and worked with Joan Root, I was able to assemble the incredible tale of not only her life, but also the cause she died for, trying to save the land and the animals that she so loved.
Wildflower: An Extraordinary Life and An Untimely Death in Africa is a book I couldn’t have imagined in the beginning of my research: the tale of a courageous and fearless woman who stood up for what she believed in at whatever cost that stand entailed. –Mark Seal
A Look Inside Wildflower
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(Photo © Alan Root)
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I could not even get past the first 50 pages. I am an ecologist deeply concerned about scenery and wildlife, and like Kenya–so have much in common with Joan Root. But Mr. Seal’s narrative took me nowhere. It was too second hand, probably too much the product of Alan Root’s memories, whih made Joan seem like an accessory to Alan’s life. Perhaps the book improved–I tried several times, but Wildflower failed to engage.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
I have such mixed feelings about the theme. The book is excellently written and brings to life a pleased-sad tale of life in Africa. My feelings are that Africa is a continent that will never work the way non-Africans reflect it will. Joan Root was a right ‘Kenya girl’, but her life could not and would not ever be right ‘African’. She was the priveleged daughter of white settlers who came with an agenda, and the agenda was not in the best interest of Africa! She became her own person after her divorce from Alan Root, yet still could not save who and what she deemed to be ’saved’. She was a conservationist and I loved that, but how do you conserve what your ancestors came to exploit? Mark Seal wrote a very compelling book about a very sad tale.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
This is a fantastic book about the life of an incredible woman. She lived a life that I could only dream of living. Her murder is very saddening and its hard to judge that this still goes on, even in the present day. She was strong and she knew that she had to do something to save the lake.
It is sad because she was fighting for a cause that no one seemed to share but now, in 2010, the Lake is in huge distress and is drying up. It baffles me how it took this long to see what is going on, they write this article as if this is new news. I like the title “Flower Farms may be killing Kenya’s lake Naivasha”…MAY BE????? Isn’t that what Joan said years and years ago?
[...]
It is a bring shame on that Joan was murdered and that her killers are still roaming this world and it is even worse that the cause she fought for and she died for is still not recognizable as a major problem until it is too late. You would reflect in this day and age that something could be done to save this lake.
Regardless, it is a fantastic book and I highly recommend it. Julia Roberts is starring in the movie that is still in production but I look forwards to seeing it…
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
I loved the tale of the adventures of Allan and Joan Root. The explanations of the beauty and the dangers of Africa were wonderful. Joan was an extraordinary woman who did for everyone despite the hardship.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
Joan Root was born in Africa in 1937, the daughter of wealthy parents who presided in Kenya. She grew to like and have fantastic compassion for the land and the animals where she lived. She maried a flamboyant outgoing man named Alan Root.
Together, they filmed incredible scenes of wildlife, animals, rivers, lakes, plants, and all sorts of life in Africa. These early videos became legendary world wide and were seen in movies and television, highlighted in magazines and newspapers from the 1950’s to the 1990’s, and brought them money and fame.
Their life as a couple is also highlighted throughout the book as they were so different, yet had so many similarities, especially the like of the land of Africa.
There are no surprises in this book, as the take in and back side tell it all. The informtion is extremely appealing as the leader examines why and how this couple lived as they did.
I don’t remember why I chose to read this book. None the less, I establish it enjoyable, but it wasn’t in the category of “gosh, I just can’t place it down!”
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5