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The Barnes & Noble Review from Discover Great New Writers
In 1936, the American public, mired in the Great Depression, was generally unaware of the existence of the rare giant panda. It was also unfamiliar with a recently widowed young Manhattan socialite named Ruth Harkness. But all that would change amidst a frenzied public maelstrom over a baby black-and-white bear named Su-Lin and the young woman who found her. Together, like Seabiscuit, they gave a disheartened populace something to cheer about.

Harkness was an accidental explorer. Shortly after their marriage, her husband, a wealthy adventurer, left for China on a quest to capture a panda. Thwarted by a series of bureaucratic snafus, he unexpectedly succumbed to the ravages of throat cancer. Despite such cautionary circumstances, Ruth decided to honor his memory by completing the mission herself. People told her she was crazy, but Harkness was undaunted. Facing treacherous con men posing as guides, bandits, hostile government employees, and rival teams of adventurers, she also traversed some of the most difficult and dangerous mountain terrain on earth. And even if she managed to find a bear, nobody knew how to keep one alive in captivity.

As in all truly important adventure stories, the real progress is made within the adventurer herself. On her final panda-hunting expedition, Harkness makes a very different decision regarding the animals she finds, honoring both humanity and her beloved pandas in the process. Croke's deft portrayal of this visionary woman and her extraordinary quest is exciting, sensitive, and meticulously researched. (Fall 2005 Selection)

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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 CRITICS

Janet Maslin - The New York Times

The Lady and the Panda winds up stranger than fiction but no less poignant. Ms. Croke has worked hard - with an effort that often shows - to give it dramatic shape. She summons just enough romance, rivalry, victory, disappointment and redemption to make this book reflect a woman who wore lipstick in the jungle. Like its heroine, it stakes everything on exotic glamour.

Vicki Conastantine Croke - The Washington Post

Were The Lady and the Panda simply an account of this journey, the book would be astonishing enough. But it is Vicki Constantine Croke's achievement to make this most improbable of explorations resonate like a classic quest narrative in which the journey into the unknown is as much about inner transformation as external conquest. Fighting public skepticism and professional jealousy, Ruth Harkness, the novice explorer, succeeded where the established fraternity of animal hunters had repeatedly failed, and in doing so discovered what she finally wanted.

Publishers Weekly

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. 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. B&w photos. Agent, Laura Blake Peterson. (On sale July 5) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Following the death of her husband, a young Manhattan socialite named Ruth Harkness decided to carry out his work-to find and bring a giant panda to the United States. Amazingly, she succeeded, much to the chagrin of the male explorers and adventurers of the 1930s. Harkness was not only successful in bringing the first known giant panda to the Western world, but, even more astonishingly, she was also able to keep it alive. Even today, with cutting-edge procedures and knowledge, zoos struggle to breed and raise endangered species in captivity. In 1938, Harkness wrote a book about her adventures, joining the elite ranks of women such as Jane Goodall who made exceptional contributions to our understanding of the behavior and ecology of the world's vanishing animal species. Drawing on her access to hundreds of Harkness's letters and conversations with family members, Croke (The Modern Ark: The Story of Zoos Past, Present and Future) provides a rich and thoroughly engaging story of a captivating and remarkable woman. This well-written, exhaustively researched and documented book should be on every library's shelves. Highly recommended.-Edell M. Schaefer, Brookfield P.L., WI Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The Boston Globe's "Animal Beat" columnist tells the story of Ruth Harkness, the explorer who brought America its first panda bear. When her husband died while exploring China, Harkness-a woman who brooked no fools and met the world armed with the wit of Dorothy Parker-decided to take up his goal and capture a live panda. In 1936, she traveled to China and set out for panda territory, literally wearing her dead husband's clothes and boots (which had been refitted for the widow by Chinese tailors and shoemakers). Croke (The Modern Ark, 1997) recounts the expedition in all its exciting and exhausting detail: risky crossings of the Yangtze, bandits trying to attack the explorers. If danger was in the air, so was Eros, and Harkness had a fling in the mountains with her hunky expedition guide, Quentin Young. On November 9, she and Young found their baby panda. Harkness named the three-pounder Su-Lin, which translates as "a little bit of something very cute." Harkness fed Su-Lin from a baby bottle and hardly let the bear out of her sight as she traveled back to Shanghai and then on to America. The pair, lady and panda, made a media sensation (Su-Lin graced the front page of The Chicago Tribune for nine days in a row). Clever capitalists marketed toy pandas, which could be had for $2.50, and Harkness eventually settled Su-Lin at the Brookfield Zoo. Croke chronicles Harkness's subsequent journeys back to China, her eventual slide into alcoholism, and her mysterious death in a hotel bathtub in 1947. But she and Su-Lin had a long-lasting impact: the adorable panda galvanized more conservationism than a thousand speeches by activists ever could. "Every time a biologist treks into the bamboo forest,or a conservation group underwrites research," writes Croke, "Harkness's mission lives on."Kudos are due for recovering the story of a larger-than-life woman and her tiny, famous panda bear. Author tour