KIDNAPPING THE LORAX, an environmental activist's dream-fulfilling tale

KIDNAPPING THE LORAX
PATRICIA LICHEN
non-affiliate Amazon link
$17.36 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: East Coast politics meet West Coast idealism when three young environmentalists kidnap the U.S. Secretary of the Interior-code-named The Lorax-and take her to the Pacific Northwest woods. Their goal is to re-educate her through tasks designed to open her eyes to the wonders of the forest, so that upon her return to Washington, DC she will be an advocate for the land. Detailed descriptions of Pacific Northwest flora and fauna.

My Review: US Secretary of the Interior Lacey Thurman is set to make a speech at a timber-industry gathering in the Benson Hotel. Plans are known to be afoot for a green group, Planet Now, to stink-bomb the conference in protest. Security is tight, a Federal official can't be left to the tender mercies of the protesters, right? Well...someone forgot that the conference has been on the Secretary's schedule for some time and therefore gave ill-wishers a chance to plant a mole in the hotel. Walden, Fern, and Tracker (not their real names) are impatient with the tomfoolery of stink-bombing a conference...what good will that do?...but they aren't above using the hijinks for their higher-risk, and they hope more effective, plan: Kidnap the Secretary and sensitize her to the plight of the forests the US Government manages for the benefit of the people...who contribute to political campaigns, THOSE people.

The plan succeeds. Sort of. The Secretary, called "The Lorax" throughout the book, is whisked in her pretty blue suit and her sensible heels to the middle of the forest, subjected to more exercise than any Federal official has ever been required to perform in modern history, and generally made cognizant of the wonders of the forest and its web of life. She and her female kidnapper, Maggie aka Fern, form a Stockholm-Syndrome-style bond. Maggie even loses a finger in her quest to re-educate this Beltway-dwelling politico on the proper place of humankind on Earth.

What ending do you suspect is coming down the pike, based on those facts? Sentimental silliness about Gaia-the-mother, bone-crushing sadness about idealism gone wrong? Nuh-uh. Lichen makes the ending real, the stakes being so high. She takes the easy, expected route, and then she says...Reality and Art can't avoid each other forever. Here it is. Live with it.

I got this book from Ms. Lichen as a Goodreads First Read. I was expecting something less professionally edited, something with a more homemade feel. I was pleasantly surprised at the level of writing ability shown in the book, and was actually involved in the story for quite a bit of the way. I was completely irritated and annoyed that the men were characterized, to use the word loosely, in such a one-dimensional and condescending way. The men's ultimate fate had a curled-lip, "feminist" feel of unsympathetic gynocentrism. As I am not at all a fan of the notion, palpably incorrect, that Woman is Superior, this factor popped me out of the story on many occasions.

But then there is the story itself: Most people can't imagine spending a night away from their gadgets, still less a night without electricity, hot running water, 911 access, a mattress...all of which middle-aged Lorax/Lacey is forced to do, reluctantly, with poor grace, but ultimately with a dawning sense of connection to the world, the *actual* world, around her. She is us...Lorax, thou art but shard of our fracturing pot. And this was for me the heart of the book, the point of the exercise: Sit in your comfy chair and read about this poor, poor lady and her travails. Sneaking in behind the story comes the grappling hook of the plight of the only world we have, and the almost desperate need of those of us like Lacey, who live in our cocoons made of pleasure and ease, to be awakened before the nightmare becomes the only reality we have.

It's nicely done. I'd recommend it to you with more enthusiasm if I didn't have the big attitudinal reservation. But I still recommend it.