Lady and the Panda (Croke)

The Lady and the Panda: The True Adventures of the First American Explorer to Bring Back China's Most Exotic Animal
Vickie Constantine Croke, 2005
Random House
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780375759703


Summary
Here is the astonishing true story of Ruth Harkness, the Manhattan bohemian socialite who, against all but impossible odds, trekked to Tibet in 1936 to capture the most mysterious animal of the day: a bear that had for countless centuries lived in secret in the labyrinth of lonely cold mountains. In The Lady and the Panda, Vicki Constantine Croke gives us the remarkable account of Ruth Harkness and her extraordinary journey, and restores Harkness to her rightful place along with Sacajawea, Nellie Bly, and Amelia Earhart as one of the great woman adventurers of all time.

Ruth was the toast of 1930s New York, a dress designer newly married to a wealthy adventurer, Bill Harkness. Just weeks after their wedding, however, Bill decamped for China in hopes of becoming the first Westerner to capture a giant panda–an expedition on which many had embarked and failed miserably. Bill was also to fail in his quest, dying horribly alone in China and leaving his widow heartbroken and adrift. And so Ruth made the fateful decision to adopt her husband’s dream as her own and set off on the adventure of a lifetime.

It was not easy. Indeed, everything was against Ruth Harkness. In decadent Shanghai, the exclusive fraternity of white male explorers patronized her, scorned her, and joked about her softness, her lack of experience and money. But Ruth ignored them, organizing, outfitting, and leading a bare-bones campaign into the majestic but treacherous hinterlands where China borders Tibet. As her partner she chose Quentin Young, a twenty-two-year-old Chinese explorer as unconventional as she was, who would join her in a romance as torrid as it was taboo.

Traveling across some of the toughest terrain in the world–nearly impenetrable bamboo forests, slick and perilous mountain slopes, and boulder-strewn passages–the team raced against a traitorous rival, and was constantly threatened by hordes of bandits and hostile natives. The voyage took months to complete and cost Ruth everything she had. But when, almost miraculously, she returned from her journey with a baby panda named Su Lin in her arms, the story became an international sensation and made the front pages of newspapers around the world. No animal in history had gotten such attention. And Ruth Harkness became a hero.

Drawing extensively on American and Chinese sources, including diaries, scores of interviews, and previously unseen intimate letters from Ruth Harkness, Vicki Constantine Croke has fashioned a captivating and richly textured narrative about a woman ahead of her time. Part Myrna Loy, part Jane Goodall, by turns wisecracking and poetic, practical and spiritual, Ruth Harkness is a trailblazing figure. And her story makes for an unforgettable, deeply moving adventure. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
Vickie Constantine Croke has been covering pets and wildlife for more than two decades—and, obviously, has been having a good time doing it.

Now reporting regularly on animal issues for NECN TV, she previously wrote The Boston Globe's "Animal Beat" column for for 13 years. A former writer and producer for CNN, she has been a contributing reporter for the National Public Radio environment show Living on Earth covering everything from gorilla conservation to a coyote vasectomy.

She consults on film and television projects, most recently a two-hour documentary on gorillas for the A&E channel. Croke is the author of The Modern Ark: The Story of Zoos-Past, Present and Future, and has also written for Time, People, the Washington Post, Popular Science, O, The Oprah Magazine, Gourmet, National Wildlife, Discover, International Wildlife, London Sunday Telegraph, and Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Since Focus Features bought the movie rights to The Lady and the Panda, Vicki has suffered a few delusions of grandeur. She is working on a screenplay—a thriller set in the animal world— that needs a little more thrill.
(From the author's website.)

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Book Reviews
The Lady and the Panda is primarily a personal story. And it conveys the unusual blend of imperiousness, caprice and affection with which Ms. Harkness approached her under-taking. At a time when adult pandas were considered too difficult and perpetually hungry to transport alive, she fastened on the idea of finding and nurturing a tiny one. (A newborn panda has the weight of a stick of butter.) She would make a surrogate child out of Su-Lin, the rare panda to leave China as anything better than a pelt.... The Lady and the Panda winds up stranger than fiction but no less poignant.
The New York Times

A real-life Indiana Jones adventure…[that] seems to grab hold of people and refuse to let go … Croke lived her story and it shows.
Chicago Tribune

An ingenious story.... Croke is smart and skillful enough to give us a romantic heroine who can hang on to her louche personality and remain believable.
Newsday

Insightful,a beautifully written work....[deals] with bigger issues: loss, fate, love, and the way animals emotionally can touch human beings.
USA Today

(Starred review.) During the Great Depression, inexpensive entertainment could be had at any city zoo. The exploits of the utterly macho men who bagged the beasts also made good adventure-film fodder. Yet one of the most famous animals ever brought to America—the giant panda—was captured by a woman, Ruth Harkness. Vicki Constantine Croke, the "Animal Beat" columnist for the Boston Globe, became fascinated by bohemian socialite Harkness, who was left alone and in difficult financial straits in 1936 after her husband died trying to bring a giant panda back from China. Instead of mourning, Harkness took on the mission. Arriving in Hong Kong with "a whiskey soda in one hand and a Chesterfield in the other," she soon found herself up against ruthless competitors, bandits, foul weather and warfare. Luckily, she was accompanied by the handsome and capable Quentin Young, her Chinese guide and eventual lover. This gripping book retraces their steps through the isolated and rugged wilderness where pandas hide, and then back to America, where the strange bears took the West by storm. Despite her remarkable journey, Harkness was derided and ignored by male adventurers. In dusting off this exciting tale, Constantine Croke (The Modern Ark: Zoos Past, Present and Future) returns Harkness to her rightful place in the top rank of zoological explorers..
Publishers Weekly

(Starred review.) It was once a story that every school kid knew. Ruth Harkness, a dress-designing socialite, following a trip laid out by her dead husband, captured the first giant panda to ever be seen in the West.... Harkness was a mass of contrasts: sophisticated city dweller and earthy lover of remote places, hard-drinking libertine, and devoted nurturer of infant pandas (yes, she went back and got more), and Croke evokes her character in an evenhanded style that makes her three-dimensional.
Booklist

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Discussion Questions
1. It's impossible to know what makes each of us who we are, but what elements of Ruth Harkness's life do you think help explain how she became such a courageous, if unlikely explorer?

2. Who and what were the greatest loves of Ruth Harkness's life?

3. Does any of the Chinese history from that period have a bearing on what we read about the country today?

4. How about the giant panda? What are the things Ruth seemed to know intuitively that took the conservation world decades to realize?

5. What about Ruth's notions of destiny? Do you believe we each are guided by a pre-ordained fate? Mull over the "what ifs" — what if Bill had brought Ruth with him to China in 1934? What if Ruth had stuck with the original plan and had made Floyd Tangier Smith and Gerry Russell her expedition partners?

6. What if she and Quentin Young had come back to the US together? What if she had stayed in China after her third expedition?

7. Ruth is both an inspiration and cautionary tale in one. Has her life made you examine your own? Has her courage and determination made you think about pursuing your own dreams?
(Questions from author's website.)

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