Non-fiction: Review of The Feather Thief by Nick Johnson

Growing up, it was not strange for my father to suddenly pull our family’s vehicle over to the side of the road and pick up a dead bird. Usually partridge, but sometimes quail or other birds spending a lot of time on the ground, he would gently pick them up, put them in a bag or whatever was available, and take them home. Not a morbid fetish or indicator of psychopathy, he had an intended use: the brightly colored plumage to tie flies for trout fishing. Every spring, just before fishing season kicked into gear, he would get his special wooden box out of the closet, set up a vice at the kitchen table, and tie flies until all hours of the night, selecting many of the needed ingredients from the birds he’d found on the road. Looking at the extremes to which this hobby is taken in the real world in utterly fascinating fashion is Nick Johnson’s The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century (2018).

The Feather Thief is the real-life story of Edwin Rist. And what a story it is. An American flautist with dreams of playing in the world’s most elite orchestras, he also had a side hobby, the mother of all passions really, of tying fishing flies. Discovering the art of faux flies at an early age, he fell in love with the colors and shapes, and by default the material and ingredients needed to make them, namely different types of feathers. The more exotic the more artistic/prestigious, Rist eventually fell into collecting, buying, and selling expensive feathers on the global market. Through all of this, he achieved world fame tying flies at a very young age. Unfortunately, it was also an age when the blindness and immaturity of youth led him to take a fateful decision: to rob the British Museum of Natural History of some of its most prized bird specimens.

The Feather Thief is not a standard biography of Rist’s life, i.e. the decisions he made, A to B to C, etc. Like a good tale spinner, Kirkwood draws into the account relevant aspects of history and society, past and present. Along with Rist’s bio, he provides readers a brief history of fly tying, and its relevance to the Victorian era when the world was Britain’s oyster to rob pearls from. He recounts the efforts of A.R. Wallace, a naturalist and contemporary of Darwin who is responsible for much of what the modern world knows of so-called birds of paradise, birds whose bright plumage are prized to this day. He looks into the online and offline world of fly tying—the forums, the conventions, the sales points, giving readers a glimpse into a niche of human existence few are aware of. And wraps it all up with his own role in bringing the heist to a state of closure.

This review would seem to have spoilers for those unfamiliar with Rist’s tale. But such is not the case. The halfway point of Kirkwood’s book is the point at which most journalists would have ended the account, namely the conclusion of Rist’s trial in the British court system. But there is still another half of the book to go. Kirkwood’s quest to get to the bottom of the situation, to get into the heart of the global bird/feather market and the people who dwell there, of the museum and its mission, and of the broader purpose of science, ornithology, and conservation proves equally fascinating reading.

In the end, The Feather Thief is one of those books that you never knew you were interested in until you start reading, and when you do start reading, you can’t put it down. Like the best thriller or action story, Johnson draws the reader in with a captivating real-world story, then fills it out with all the colorful—literal and figurative—details history and society provide. Zero knowledge of fishing or tying flies is needed. Like Searching for Sugar Man or Unbreakable, this is one of those real-world histories that needs to be read to be believed. Otherwise, you might think it was a novel. Thus, even if the subject material doesn’t seem appealing, the manner in which Johnson spins out the story, and the sheer esoteric nature of its origin and direction, is more than enough. Rist wasn’t even a fisherman, for goodness’ sake!