978-0-89587-353-8
0-89587-353-2
$22.95 hardcover
6" x 9"
293 pages
Available Now!
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Dana Armstrong is no ordinary primatologist. In the 1970s, she was the little blond girl with a chimpanzee for a sister, a participant in her father's psychology experiment that sought to narrow the divide between species. Now, decades later, the black-and-white clips of Dana bathing, learning sign language, and throwing tantrums with her "sister" still flicker in classrooms across the country. Dana wants nothing more than to forget about them, but as director of a chimpanzee sanctuary in the woods of South Carolina, she cannot escape.
Dana arrives at work one morning to discover that the worst has happened: someone has vandalized the buildings and opened the cages, setting loose a group of particularly dangerous chimpanzees. She mobilizes her staff to capture the missing chimps before they can injure local citizens or be killed themselves. The sanctuary is already on precarious ground, and if it fails, the chimps--some infected with HIV, some survivors of experimental surgeries, some rescued from roadside zoos--have nowhere to go. The sanctuary is all they--and Dana--have left.
As Dana scrambles to determine who was responsible, pressure mounts from all sides--from local protesters; from animal rights groups; from the university that oversees the sanctuary; from an old nemesis bent on destroying her; from journalist Sam Wendt, who seems attracted to Dana on moment but exposes her vulnerabilities the next; from her brother, Zack, an overgrown child who shares her past even as he sabotages her future. As political and personal tensions rise in the human world, the chimpanzees have their own crisis, events that Dana, more than ever, cannot afford to ignore.
Captivity is a unique, surprising world unto itself--a high literary work, a page-turner, and an issues novel all at once.
about the author
Debbie Lee Wesselmann is the author of Trutor & the Balloonist, which was named by Amazon.com as one of the top ten small press books of 1997, and The Earth and the Sky. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Fairleigh Dickinson University, she lives in Pennsylvania, where she teaches English at Lehigh University.
reviews
Review from Publishers Weekly (starred)
"A South Carolina chimpanzee sanctuary affiliated with a university provides the unusual setting for Wesselmann's powerful second novel (after 1997's Trutor & the Balloonist). Dana Armstrong, a primatologist, acquired her understanding of chimpanzees at great personal cost, having been raised along with her younger brother, Zack with a female chimp as a sibling (they communicated using sign language) until a tragic event ended the experiment. Now she must deal with an even more traumatic event. One day Dana arrives at the sanctuary, where she's the director, to discover that someone has has damaged buildings and released chimpanzees unadapted to the wild. As Dana battles to save the sanctuary, personal and professional jealousies, campus politics, the fate of the chimpanzees and the stirring stories of Dana and her family play out in unforgettable fashion. With empathetic insight, the author precisely observes both human and animal behavior."
Review from Library Journal (starred)
"Primatologist Dana Armstrong is passionate about making a difference in the lives of the animals living at a South Carolina chimpanzee sanctuary. But a break-in resulting in the escape of numerous chimpanzees forces Dana to not only determine who was responsible for the vandalism but also deal with her traumatic memories of the past—for Dana is a survivor of a psychological experiment, raised as a child with a chimp named Annie. She now faces opposition from the local community, political pressure from her university, and a ghost from her past who is bent upon her destruction. To further complicate matters, Dana's seldom-seen rogue brother appears on her doorstep, and a handsome journalist tugs at her heartstrings. Novelist Wesselmann (Trutor and the Balloonist; The Earth and the Sky) has once again combined a riveting plot with exciting characters to hold you spellbound until the last page. This novel, which raises many ethical and moral considerations, is most timely. On October 30, 2007, a chimpanzee named Washoe died at the age of 42. He was the first nonhuman known to communicate in a human language. [For your reading group, you might want to pair this with Elizabeth Hess's nonfiction Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Humann.—Ed.]"—Melody Ballard, Pima Cty. P.L., Tucson, AZ
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