Now let’s get ready for a fascinating true-crime story as you journey into the underworld of plume peddlers and fanatical hobbyists obsessed with the Victorian art of salmon fly-tying as we read The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson.
In 2009, a young American musician named Edwin Rist stole hundreds of rare bird skins from the British Museum of Natural History, many painstakingly collected 150 years earlier by a contemporary of Charles Darwin. The gorgeous feathers these rare birds sported were worth large sums of money to the men who shared Edwin’s obsession: the Victorian art of salmon fly-tying.
Years later, Kirk Wallace Johnson, himself a fly fisherman, learned of the shocking theft and was consumed with questions about how Edwin pulled off the heist, what became of the feathers and the skins, if there was ever a reckoning. The quest for answers led to a years-long, worldwide investigation that reads more like a gripping novel than the bizarre true story it is. The Feather Thief details Johnson’s relentless pursuit of the truth and explores the nature of obsession and man’s destructive instinct to harvest the beauty of nature.
The next book club meeting with be Tuesday, September 8. If you would like to participate, contact Mike Warner at mwarner2543@gmail.com.