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Looking forward to a new summer thriller? Give The Feather Thief a try. Author Kirk Wallace Johnson points out that in the early 1900’s, an ounce of the finest plumes from a Snowy Egret cost $32, while gold cost only $20. The women’s fashion craze for bird feathers drove the markets, but as a result, plume hunters wiped out colonies of wading birds up and down America’s coastlines. Fortunately, a handful of women led the charge to stop the slaughter, giving rise to the modern bird conservation movement. Feathers, though, continued to be a hot commodity in a few underground circles.
Driven by fashion of another sort – feathers coveted for elaborate flies tied for salmon fishing and high art, a 20-year-old American music student broke into the British Museum of Natural History in 2009 and stole nearly 300 priceless century-old museum specimens of birds. This thriller is one-part mystery, one-part natural history of birds, and one-part fly-tying culture.
The stolen museum specimens had survived predatory insects, the bombing of London, and fires. Were they now to be lost to fly-tiers? Kirk Wallace Johnson becomes fascinated with the heist after a casual mention about it from his fishing guide that results in him spending the next several years tracking down the stolen bird collections and penetrating the museum and fly-tying cultures. It’s a page-turner!
For more information, contact Viking Press at https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/534655/the-feather-thief-by-kirk-wallace-johnson/9781101981610