Wildflower by Mark Seal: book review

Wildflower (2010) is about the life and death of Joan Root (1936-2006), the wife and producer/assistant of wildlife documentary film-maker Alan Root. One of the couple’s films about termites, Mysterious Castles of Clay, narrated by Orson Welles, was nominated for an Oscar in 1978. Other films included the migration of wildebeest herds across the Serengeti, the Galapagos Islands, elephants, cobras, mountain gorillas, and the first hot-air balloon flight over Mount Kilimanjaro. They were an indomitable team.

Born in Kenya to British parents, Joan was also well-known for her conservation efforts at Lake Naivasha. But the novel begins with her marriage to Alan in 1961, and their collaborative travels and films, predominantly across East Africa.

Compiled from letters and memorabilia from her husband, Seal enters the mind and emotions of a remarkable adventurer. While Alan was the “front man” and the man behind the camera, Joan was the one that put the film together “and more” – photography, preproduction, post production, processing, recording, accounting, procurement, packing vehicles, and fixing things. “Joan did all that single-handedly.” Yet she was quiet and self-effacing, staying in the background. Seal describes Joan in favourable terms – beautiful, gentle, quiet, strong, capable, meticulous, and organized.

Setting up home at Lake Naivasha, it had become the couple’s headquarters and film studio, but it was also a home for animals of every kind. Film-making was the glue that held them together. But over the years Alan spent more and more time editing his films in London. And then he met “the most attractive” Jennie Hammond – who increasingly took charge of Alan’s life. He married her in 1991.

From that point, the focus of Seal’s book is firmly on Joan’s personal reinvention and her “major turning point” after the divorce and subsequent loss of her career – her emotional state, and her life on her property in Naivasha. No longer a “shrinking violet” she did things out of character – joining the elite Muthaiga Club and going to London for a face-lift. Still acutely sad, she became consumed by the conservation of Lake Naivasha, which would create her biggest challenge of all.

Well-written, well-paced, intriguing, poignant, supportive and understanding, Seal writes of Joan's tensions and conflicts with poachers, criminals, and land-grabbers, reaching a climax with constant home invaders, gun-point robberies, and the violent deaths of those living around her – and her ultimate murder.