Waking Up in Eden: In Pursuit of an Impassioned Life on an Imperiled Island [Paperback]

Lucinda Fleeson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 16, 2009

Like so many of us, Lucinda Fleeson wanted to escape what had become a routine life. So, she quit her big-city job, sold her suburban house, and moved halfway across the world to the island of Kauai to work at the National Tropical Botanical Garden. Imagine a one-hundred-acre garden estate nestled amid ocean cliffs, rain forests, and secluded coves. Exotic and beautiful, yes, but as Fleeson awakens to this sensual world, exploring the island's food, beaches, and history, she encounters an endangered paradise—the Hawaii we don't see in the tourist brochures.

Native plants are dying at an astonishing rate—Hawaii is called the Extinction Capital of the World—and invasive species (plants, animals, and humans) have imperiled this Garden of Eden. Fleeson accompanies a plant hunter into the rain forest to find the last of a dying species, descends into limestone caves with a paleontologist who deconstructs island history through fossil life, and shadows a botanical pioneer who propagates rare seeds, hoping to reclaim the landscape. Her grown-up adventure is a reminder of the value of choosing passion over security, individuality over convention, and the pressing need to protect the earth. And as she witnesses the island's plant renewal efforts, she sees her own life blossom again.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Fleeson could see the handwriting on the wall: big changes were coming to the metro newspaper where she’d worked hard to build a solid career, and it seemed wise to get out while the getting was good. Fleeing to 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 island’s 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 island’s 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. --Carol Haggas

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Product Details

• Paperback: 310 pages
• Publisher: Algonquin Books (June 16, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565124863
• ISBN-13: 978-1565124868
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #421,340 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I began my journalism career in college as a photographer, shooting rock concerts and protest marches for alternative weeklies in Boston and Cambridge, Mass. Freelancing stories, I began to find my voice as a reporter and writer and eventually abandoned the camera for a typewriter.
Hooked on news, I worked for several local papers before landing at The Philadelphia Inquirer. I wrote hundreds of news articles, features and investigative stories that tracked everything from corruption in the Atlantic City police department, to the art and cultural beat. I never expected to leave The Inquirer, imagining that I'd die with a half-written story in the computer. But as the landscape for journalism started shifting cataclysmically under my feet, I felt stymied, fenced in, at a dead end.
Because of my amateur interest in gardening, I had befriended a Philadelphia botanist, Dr. William Klein, who became the director of the National Tropical Botanical Garden in Hawaii. Unexpectedly he offered me a job, and I grabbed it.
For two years I lived on Kauai. As I explored the Hawaiian plant crisis and hunted down garden history, I realized that I was, and always will be, a reporter at heart.
The Hawaiian experience returned me to journalism, but in a new sphere. I spent several years training journalists overseas, in Eastern and Central Europe, Africa and Latin America. Settling in Washington, D.C., I freelanced articles for the Washington Post, Mother Jones, the American Journalism Review, and others. Now I direct a program for international journalists at the University of Maryland College of Journalism, and teach writing and reporting.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Nice Book, October 14, 2009

By 

Charles Calvert "charliecal" (Bellevue, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Waking Up in Eden: In Pursuit of an Impassioned Life on an Imperiled Island (Paperback)

I enjoyed this book very much, and would recommend it to anyone who goes to Kauai, and particularly to anyone who is interested in the National Tropical Botanical Garden (NTBG). Fleeson is a good writer and a good storyteller. She has an interesting story to tell, and I enjoyed hearing it. Yet there was something about that book that was less than completely satisfying.

"Waking up in Eden" has many compelling passages and some that seem strangely dry and out of place. My copy is about 300 pages long. I think I could have made a better 225 page book from this manuscript. There are passages, one about a restaurant in Honolulu, another about a birthday luau for Japanese child, that read exactly like well written articles for the Style section in the Sunday edition of a newspaper. Unfortunately, these are exactly the kind of articles that I usually skip, and I found it odd that they somehow made their way into a book on a subject I found engaging. Other passages, notably a wonderful section on Kuaui resident Keith Robinson, again read like a passage from a newspaper, but this time I wanted to hear much more about the topic, as it seemed very germane to the main themes of the book. When the passage ended, I felt as though I were left hanging. The author had my complete attention, and this was a book, not a newspaper, and so I expected more on a subject that was so central to the book.

The book had two primary themes:

1) The National Botanical Garden
2) A woman's attempt to make a life a in Kauai

When Fleeson stuck to these topics, I enjoyed almost everything she wrote. If anything, I wanted to hear more about the garden, and more about her struggles to build a life in the tropics. I wasn't at all bored when she wrote about her parents, or about the office politics at her job as a fund raiser for the garden. She writes well, and when she found a topic worthy of her efforts, I enjoyed what she had to say very much. This is not, however, a great book about a voyage of self-discovery, nor is it a great book about botanical gardens and the struggle to preserve or understand the ecology of Hawaii.

Fleeson is very talented, and could perhaps do almost anything she wants. However, in this book, I felt that she wanted to preserve her friendships and her future career more than she wanted to tell the real truth about her personal life or the National Tropical Botanical Garden. She is an excellent reporter, and I learned a lot about her life, and lot about the NTBG. Yet I always felt that the real truth lay just outside the margins, just a few sentences beyond the text found in the book. Perhaps that is why I was so frustrated by the paragraphs on the restaurants in Honolulu. She was reverting completely to her journalistic roots, and turning her back on a reader who wanted to hear more.

Yet I would recommend this book to anyone who is drawn to its subject matter. Certainly her passages on the fascinating Isabella Bird are among the best I've read on that remarkable author, and they alone make the book worthwhile. Indeed, there are many other fine passages in the book. Please go ahead and read it, just don't expect too much.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No nonsense adventures in Eden, August 20, 2009

By 

Elva K. Malone (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Waking Up in Eden: In Pursuit of an Impassioned Life on an Imperiled Island (Paperback)

Lucinda Fleeson's memoir "Waking Up in Eden" is no navel gazer - thank you very much - but the true adventures of a women who, nearing middle age, woke up to smell the coffee and instead of freaking out took a giant gulp of it and got on with her life.
Leaving her job at the Philadelphia Inquirer and her home with its English rose garden Fleeson moves to the Hawaiian island of Kauai and its 1000 acre tropical garden. This is a volitile and damaged isle whose natural order is fast disappearing. What is also disappearing is her youth and some of her choices. In a chatty and unselfconscious way Fleeson re-examines her heart's desire and tallies up her wins and losses, all the while packing her trekking boots. The adventure is on and soon enough it is not so much the exotic isle and its fragile flowers or even the colorful characters dedicated to saving them, but Fleeson's inherent interest in, well, everything, that makes her journey a page turner.
Officially, Fleeson job is to raise funds for the National Tropical Botanical Garden - an Eden that is in serious risk of imploding. Proposal writing and coaxing money out of rich people could sound rather dry but Fleeson is a deft writer. The people, politics and history surrounding the NTBG is intriguing enough, but its how Fleeson grabs onto her new life that swept me up. She gets her hands dirty in the island's red clay, rides horseback along its beaches, treks up mountains climbing through dense jungle, tries surfing, learns to row like hell with the Kawaikini Women's Canoe Club and before she leaves plants her own tropical garden.
Along the way Fleeson introduces herself, and us, to a gaggle of interesting and passionate people and its here that we see the true depth of Ms. Fleeson's nature, her search for her authentic self reveled by her insight into others. One telling example is her description of Alan Wong, a celebrated Hawaiian chef, "....he scans your eyes, as if looking to see if the information arrived. It's a listener's trait .... indicative of a great teacher." And Ms. Fleeson appears to be both.
Fleeson teaches us a lot about exotic flora (which is more interesting than you might think) but she shows us that taking big risks, forcing one's passions and keeping on your big girl panties (most of the time) may not answer all of life's questions but it is the only way to live them.
From Kauai Ms. Fleeson moves on to Budapest - I can't wait for the sequel.
Elva Malone
August 20, 2009

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Horticultural Adventure in Kauai, August 19, 2009

By 

Shed Style "Debra" (Thousand Oaks, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Waking Up in Eden: In Pursuit of an Impassioned Life on an Imperiled Island (Paperback)

When my review copy of "Waking Up in Eden" arrived from the publisher, I took one look at it and thought, "oh, another female-midlife-crisis memoir."
I didn't think about it again until weeks later. I was leaving for a weekend getaway and needed a paperback to bring along. I picked up Lucinda Fleeson's book and practically couldn't put it down for the next 48 hours. What a lovely memoir. Mesmerizing. Her personal narrative of navigating a creatively fulfilling life is balanced with a journalist's unrelenting efforts to report on Kauai's horticulutural world, past and present. As a garden writer, I swallowed it, inhaled it, and imagined the Kauai she described.
I visited the island once, 25 years ago. But I feel like Lucinda gave me a personally-guided tour in the pages of "Waking Up." It was a tour I never would have discovered on a vacation visit.