A Book about Stealing Feathers? Yes, It's Worth Reading

Ho hum: this book is about stealing feathers. Wait a minute. It’s really about stealing feathers? Why yes, yes it is, and for that we can be grateful.

Kirk Wallace Johnson’s The Feather Thief does the job that so many enjoyable nonfiction books do, of giving you an author who for one reason or another, becomes the one person who should tell you a true life story. From the moment he hears of the thief Edwin Rist, who in this century stole about $1 million worth of bird feathers collected in the Victorian era, Johnson is in. His book takes us on his journey to understand and explain Rist to his audience, and fills in details of how the heist came to be.

Wallace shines when he imagines Rist in action, such as when he breaks into the natural history museum in England to access the feathers. We see the dozens and dozens of birds fall into Rist’s suitcase, that same suitcase then tucked between the young man’s legs on the subway as he travels back to his apartment. At each step, we wonder along with Rist if he will get caught, if he can expect a squadron of police to be awaiting him at his subway stop.

Wallace also brings to life the peripheral characters that fill Rist’s world: the detective who eventually arrests him, the feather collectors who will pay thousands of dollars for just a bit of the stolen goods, and Rist’s family, who do their best to mitigate the damage Rist has brought upon himself.

A character like Rist is best explored but not pinned down in a nonfiction crime thriller. Here, we wonder if Rist’s diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome, used at his trial to relieve him of any jail time, was really the driving force behind his crimes. Perhaps it was just that he needed the money to buy a nice flute, because he is a gifted musician in one of the top music colleges in the world at the time he commits his crime. In his one 8-hour interview with Wallace, the author suggests he has figured out whether the Asperger’s diagnosis was applicable, but doesn't tell the reader which way he's come down on it. It is smart move, leaving us to decide for ourselves. 

Much of modern nonfiction, needing a tie-in to the author’s own life to explain why he or she writes this book, would probably like a better one for Wallace. He was depressed, went fishing, and his fishing guide mentions Rist, and the obsession begins. That connection seemed barely tenable, but nonfiction might do better to allow writers to just tell stories because they are interesting, and leave it at that.

By the end of The Feather Thief, the reader feels as though they’ve gone on one strange, engrossing journey about stolen feathers.

Thank you to Thank you to Caitlin Swofford for suggesting The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century.

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