Garwell Sorrentino was a legendary tropical botanist with the Cincinnati Botanical Garden, and arguably the world’s expert on the rain forests of southeastern Peru. Twenty-five years ago, he was believed lost when an ultra-light craft that he was piloting alone above the unbroken forests of the Río Madre De Dios watershed caught fire and crashed. No trace of Sorrentino was ever found. His last graduate student and best friend, Anton Kovac, was fired in disgrace from his botanist position at the Garden five years after Sorrentino’s disappearance. Kevin Hobart, the Garden’s director, and both his and Sorrentino’s former boss, contacts Kovac out of the blue, with rumors that his friend is alive. Anton and Garwell’s widow, Nell, travel to southeastern Peru, in search of Sorrentino. Ultimately, the adventure is transformative for both of them.
The novel is at once a love story, a tale of friendship and the bonds that tie us together. It includes moments of magical realism, intimacy, adventure, and mystery, all against the backdrop of the Amazon forest. Any adult who enjoys a solid tale, rich with characters with whom they can emphasize and a plot that keeps them turning the page, is the audience for "Botánicos."
Garwell Sorrentino was a legendary tropical botanist with the Cincinnati Botanical Garden, and arguably the world’s expert on the rain forests of southeastern Peru. Twenty-five years ago, he was believed lost when an ultra-light craft that he was piloting alone above the unbroken forests of the Río Madre De Dios watershed caught fire and crashed. No trace of Sorrentino was ever found. His last graduate student and best friend, Anton Kovac, was fired in disgrace from his botanist position at the Garden five years after Sorrentino’s disappearance. Kevin Hobart, the Garden’s director, and both his and Sorrentino’s former boss, contacts Kovac out of the blue, with rumors that his friend is alive. Anton and Garwell’s widow, Nell, travel to southeastern Peru, in search of Sorrentino. Ultimately, the adventure is transformative for both of them.
The novel is at once a love story, a tale of friendship and the bonds that tie us together. It includes moments of magical realism, intimacy, adventure, and mystery, all against the backdrop of the Amazon forest. Any adult who enjoys a solid tale, rich with characters with whom they can emphasize and a plot that keeps them turning the page, is the audience for "Botánicos."
The phone’s insistent ring cut deep into Kovac’s REM sleep, and he woke grasping at the last fading tendrils of a vague erotic dream. He withdrew one arm from under the sheet that covered him, and, in his daze, reached for the offending instrument without looking at the screen. He likely would have passed on the call if he had done so.
“Hello?” he murmured.
“Anton, it’s Kevin Hobart,” perhaps identifying himself lest Kovac had purged his number from his contacts (which he had).
Kovac shot upward in his bed. “Kevin,” he replied. “It’s been…”
“Twenty years,” Kevin Hobart interrupted. Hobart was the most well-known botanist on the planet and director of the most extensive research botanical garden in the United States. He had also once been Kovac’s employer. Twenty years ago.
Kovac swung out of bed and traipsed into the small kitchen in his boxers and t-shirt. The shirt, old, thin, and stretched out, had a graphic of an incandescent plant with beautiful flowers. It was a Brazilian species that Anton had himself described a quarter century ago. He started the coffee machine while framing his next words in his head.
“Anton?” Hobart queried.
“Uh, yeah, Kevin … sorry, I just got up.” He paused, closing his eyes and leaning against the counter. “What’s on your mind?”
“A mutual friend,” Hobart continued. “Garwell Sorrentino.”
Kovac grunted and muttered, “You feeling sentimental, Kevin?” He regretted it immediately.
Hobart sighed theatrically, then cleared his throat before speaking again. “I have it on good counsel that he’s still alive. I thought you would want to know.”
Kovac suddenly grew light-headed and pulled a small wooden chair away from an equally small table he could easily reach in his starkly apportioned kitchen. He fell, more than sat, onto it heavily. “That’s ridiculous,” he said.
“There was no trace,” Hobart replied
“Yeah, I know. And given the preponderance of animal scavengers in the area, no one was surprised.”
Garwell Sorrentino was solo piloting an ultralight aircraft above a primary site in southeastern Peru twenty-five years ago, when its engine stalled and caught fire, causing the ultralight to plummet a thousand feet towards the treetops. The craft was smashed to smithereens by the expansive canopy of a forest giant. When a recovery team arrived weeks later (it took a minor miracle to get one into the trackless tropical wilderness at the height of the rainy season), no trace of the botanist’s remains was discovered. Sorrentino was widely crowned as the world’s most knowledgeable authority on tropical forest dynamics and biodiversity and had been conducting canopy surveys of a region rumored to be the richest tract in the southwestern corner of the upper Amazon basin. Despite entreaties by his collaborators to involve others in these surveys, Garwell had thrown caution to the wind and went aloft by himself that time. His collection numbers were a legend unto themselves; over a hundred thousand unique herbarium specimens bore his name as the primary collector. Gar, ten years Kovac’s senior, had also been his doctoral academic mentor at the midwestern botanical garden helmed by Kevin Hobart, through a collaborative relationship between the Garden and the Ohio State University. In more ways than one, Sorrentino had shaped the caliber of scientist that Anton Kovac had once been, and had also, across the decades of their association, become his closest friend.
“So, Anton,” Hobart said. “What’s your schedule like in the next few months?”
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
“He wants you to do what?” Nell exclaimed, eyes growing wide as she lowered her wineglass to the table. Kovac leaned back in his chair and eyed Nell Sorrentino with a bemused look. They were seated at a table for two at Kovac’s favorite restaurant in Little Italy.
Nell was Garwell’s widow, though truth be told, they had separated shortly before his ill-fated field trip to Peru. Kovac often wondered why she retained her married name all the years since. He paused while their server deposited another basket of warm bread on the table between them. Sorrentino had been a legendary philanderer; some would have said a predatory one at that, based on the average age of his universe of bedmates, starry-eyed female graduate students for the most part, at least those with whom Anton was familiar. The great irony was that Sorrentino treated them badly, casting them off with heartless abandon once he grew bored or they became too besotted. It was the one character flaw in his friend that Anton judged harshly, but he wasn’t beneath being the young ladies’ rebound comfort when the opportunity presented itself. Nell had built a productive and awarded career with the New York Botanical Garden as a specialist in the coffee family, a successful, sprawling inter-continental assemblage that included not only coffee but quinine. She had recently accepted a generous offer for early retirement. She had shifted her work on the family to its Asian branches after their separation, and then to Brazil. Both of her children with Garwell, son and daughter, were each pursuing careers in zoology and medicine, respectively. Anton had been something of a Dutch uncle for them in the absence of their father. Nell was nearing 63 but was fit and lithe. Her long gray hair was typically tied up in a bun; that night, she wore it down, and Kovac almost didn’t recognize her.
Kovac turned to survey the other patrons at various stages of their meals. His eyes caught those of a middle-aged man of indigenous South American appearance, a phenotype he knew well from years of field experience in the region. The man held his gaze, and a small smile twitched at the corners of his mouth.
“Says he’ll pay for the entire trip with a generous per diem,” he said, turning back to the still-warm bread.
“To look for my dead husband,” Nell snorted.
“In a nutshell.”
Nell inhaled deeply and raised herself up in her chair. “I’m coming with you,” she said forthrightly.
“No, you’re not,” Anton replied. “That’s a non-starter—end of story. I haven’t even said ‘yes’ yet.”
“Oh, you will,” Nell retorted. “And I’m coming with you. I’ll buy my own ticket.”
Kovac sighed. He’d known Nell long enough to be familiar with her powerful obstinance. “What will you tell the kids?”
Nell smiled sweetly. “That their uncle and I are taking a field trip to Peru.”
This is the tale of two friends, Garwell Sorrentino, a legendary tropical botanist who disappeared in the rain forests of Peru twenty-five years ago, and Anton Kovac, his last graduate student at the Cincinnati Botanical Garden. Sorrentino left behind a wife and two children and Anton has been a surrogate uncle to them ever since. In the modern day Anton is surprised to be contacted by Kevin Hobart, the Garden’s director, who tells him there are rumours that Sorrentino is alive, so Anton and Garwell’s wife, Nell, travel to Peru in search of him. There they link up with an old friend and local co-worker, Oscar Crescente, and Anton and Oscar head off deep into the forest in pursuit of their friend.
Anton, Nell and Oscar are fully rounded characters and as a reader you are fully invested in their story. Garwell himself is an intriguing individual and his emotional conversion to forest life and to the tribe which takes him in is well conveyed. The novel is structured with multiple flashbacks so that we find out how he survived the plane crash and what happened to him after that.
The story progresses at a steady pace, with the occasional eruption of real danger as when, for example, the miners, who are poisoning the rivers with mercury and destroying the jungle eco-system, move onto the tribe’s land with guns and menaces. While sexually explicit the story mostly concentrates on touching human interaction with believable dialogue. The tale also cleverly demonstrates one of the shamanistic beliefs in Garwell’s tribe that people under the influence of the drug ayahuasca can inhabit an animal or bird body and leave their own.
The power of the novel lies, as its name implies, in the botanical wonders of the Peruvian jungle and the myriad healing plants it contains, although, as a novel, this may also be one of its weaknesses as the information on the many plants unknown to the average reader (me) without reference to the glossary, particularly at the beginning, sometimes slows up the action. And your enjoyment of the book is likely to be influenced by the degree of credence you give to the shamanistic aspects of the tale. However, its description of the very real way modern industry is ravaging the Amazon forest make it an illuminating and worthwhile read, having mystery, adventure, and a convincing love story as well. Enjoy!