After reading fiction for my last few books, I decided to delve back into nonfiction with The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century – the true story of a music prodigy college kid (his instrument is the flute), who also happens to be a fly-tying prodigy, stealing rare bird skins and feathers from a museum in London because he wanted his flies to be the best of the best. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: truth is WAY stranger than fiction. No one could make this stuff up.
My mom’s book club read this book years ago (it was published in 2018 and her crew is always on top of the new books) but I think I finally got around to reading it because my son LOVES feathers. Hopefully he never robs a museum – but I digress. Written by Kirk Wallace Johnson, a journalist who founded the List Project which helped resettle over 2,000 United States-affiliated Iraqi allies, The Feather Thief chronicles how music/fly-tying genius Edwin Rist went from tying flies to obsessing over feathers to robbing the Tring Museum.
The Prologue drew me in because Johnson was fly-fishing when his friend casually mentioned that Rist, “one of the best tiers on the planet,” “broke into the British Museum of Natural History just to get birds for [specific] flies.” In an effort to find out what happened and gain a better understanding of the “devilish relationship between man and nature and his unrelenting desire to lay claim to its beauty,” Johnson spent the next five years tracking down the truth.
Unfortunately, Part I of this book is a little slow. I’m all for background information and history, but the initial 81 pages were laborious to read. But once Part II began, the narrative got going – especially when Rist “decided he needed to see the greatest collection in the world.” As chapter 8 describes Rist’s obsession with feathers reaching a new level, the story really gathers steam as he delves into full-on heist planning mode. As I turned the pages, I found myself shocked at the fact that being an incredibly talented flutist became second to his fly-tying skills (he is named “Fly Tier of the Year”) and his stealing skills. Also, the investigation following the theft is out of a movie because the museum didn’t notice anything was missing until over a month later. As a result, the detective assigned to the case has trouble identifying a clear motive, as well the thief’s methods. It wasn’t until a year later that Rist was tied to the case and things began to unravel.
Although I don’t want to ruin the story – it’s a good one – I will say that the connection between Rist’s musical prowess and fly-tying expertise fascinated me the entire time I was reading. Also, learning about the underbelly of fly-tying (who knew that even existed?!) was captivating because I live with an avid fly fisherman who (legally) ties his own flies. Part III was definitely my favorite because Johnson switched back to the first person (the story was in the third person for all of Parts I and II) and I got a real sense of what the journalist/author (my favorite kind) went through to get the full story of behind the Tring heist. “The side hobby turned into a mission, a quest for justice in a crime where none had been served.” His journalistic point of view was thrilling to read because most journalists who write books know exactly what it takes to track down people and information: a ton of work that is equally exhausting and time-consuming. But worth it.
Quotes:
Johnson on fly-fishing: “It was the only thing that brought calm amid the storm of stress that had become my life.”
“Where something is scarce, people are creative.”
“I felt as though I was barging into a speakeasy that had already been tipped off.”
Johnson on the Wayback Machine: “It was like peeling back a layer of earth to find a perfectly persevered fossilized skeleton.”
“I didn’t know how to tell [students] that I had become obsessed with righting a different kind of injustice and dreamed of chasing down a feather thief.”
“The act of telling me meant letting go of a narrative he’d been embracing for years.”
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