Captivity
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Synopsis:
Dana Armstrong is no ordinary primatologist. She was the little girl captured by the cameras of her father's doomed psychology experiment designed to bridge the species barrier by raising a chimpanzee as a member of his own family. Decades later, the Armstrongs are a uniquely dysfunctional family. Dana devotes her life, often at the expense of intimacy, to rescuing and housing discarded chimpanzees at the South Carolina sanctuary she directs. Her brother Zack is a drifter, often seduced by drugs, sometimes wanted by the police. When Dana arrives one morning to discover that someone has released the chimps at the sanctuary, she faces a series of crises that pit her against her brother, the local community, her colleagues, an inquisitive journalist, and a nemesis from her past.
The parallel cultures of chimpanzees and humans highlight the truth that we can learn more about ourselves through observing other species than perhaps we realize.
From Publishers Weekly (starred): "A South Carolina chimpanzee sanctuary affiliated with a university provides the unusual setting for Wesselmann's powerful second novel . . . The stirring stories of Dana Armstrong and her family play out in unforgettable fashion. With empathetic insight, the author precisely observes both human and animal behavior."
From Library Journal (starred): "Novelist Wesselmann 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."
Book Excerpt:
Dana loved dawns like these, when the world was blinded by humidity. The October fog caressed her throat with a lush moisture that made her want to throw her head back and drink up its coolness before the sun burnt it off. From the empty dirt and gravel parking lot, she could barely make out the form of the main building and knew only by memory where the electric fence lay. She could imagine she had emerged from her truck not in South Carolina but somewhere else entirely-another country, another continent.
A hunched figure about four feet tall raced through the half-darkness. Dana cried out and clutched her briefcase strap so fiercely it buckled in her grip. She peered into the mist. Nothing-no movement, no sound to track. She dropped her briefcase to free her hands and began to pant-hoot, softly at first and gradually louder and more urgent-Hoo, hoo, hoo-until her voice erupted into a shriek-WRAAAAA, WRAAAAA. From inside the electric fence, several chimpanzees called back, but another, closer one hooted behind her.
Dana jerked her head toward the hoot, which she immediately recognized as that of Barafu, a female chimp who had arrived at the sanctuary from a medical laboratory only the month before. Through the fog, a dark shape moved along the branch of a nearby tree before it stopped and settled almost invisibly into the surroundings. Dana could not believe it. Until now, Barafu had sat impassively in her holding cage, chewing her fingers until they bled, staring with the glassy, heartbreaking incomprehension of someone who had endured too much.
Dana removed her lunch from her briefcase, took an apple from the brown bag, and crouched beneath the tree. At first, she could not get her legs comfortable, so she shuffled, finding the right droop to her butt, the right tension in her thighs, a balance to her body that connected her to the earth. As much as she hated to admit it (and would not to anyone other than herself), her body no longer stretched and settled as easily as it once had. She prodded the pine needles with her free hand as though she were foraging for food. From the tree, Barafu watched, but the mist guarded her expression, so if she was curious or fearful, Dana could not tell.
Dana grunted, then took a crackling bite of the apple. With a fluid motion, she stretched the fruit toward Barafu, offering, watching the chimp for the moment when the fog brushed away from her face and Dana could judge what was going to happen next.
Barafu stiffly-in a manner far too elderly for her age-began her descent. The two primates, chimpanzee and human, faced each other in the lifting fog. The chimp brought her hand across her nose, wiping it, and stared at the apple. She lifted her gaze to Dana's with an unspoken question in her eyes: May I have that apple? Dana paused, studying the fruit as though reluctant to part with it. Barafu extended her arm, gestured with her fingers. Come on, please. Because Dana could not break a small portion of the apple off the way some of the chimps would, she placed the whole fruit in Barafu's upturned palm.
Instead of rushing back up the tree or into the shrubbery with her prize, Barafu began eating the apple at once, crunching loudly, pausing only to remove the woody stem from between her gum and cheek and then push it toward the center of her mouth. Except for a decided sag on the right side of her face, Barafu was a beautiful chimp with large, deep-set eyes and a full, contemplative mouth. Dana reached out tentatively, as if by touching the chimp's arm she could learn Barafu's heart and history. The chimpanzee edged closer, offering her left side and back for a grooming. Dana almost forgot to breathe as she worked her fingers through the ape's wiry hair. She had touched many chimps in her lifetime, but each new encounter was a miracle of intimacy: the warmth rising off the body, the solid, yielding muscle underneath, the individual shape and smell of each chimpanzee. Her fingers found a ridge of hard scar about four inches long on Barafu's back, the hair gone from the skin around it. Barafu, once at the mercy of humans, let this human touch her. The trust was almost too great for Dana to bear. Oh, Annie, she thought, Annie. Touching Barafu's scar felt like a connection to long ago, when Dana was even more helpless than she was now.
Barafu tensed, and Dana stopped grooming. The chimp stared at something in the thinning fog, her mouth stretching into a tight grimace of fear that exposed her gums. A hunter, Dana thought, and she prepared to spring between the intruder and the ape, but instead another chimpanzee, the adolescent male Nyuki (Swahili for "Bee," from the strange buzz he was able to create with his lips) ambled toward them with the leisurely knuckle-walk of a chimp coming into his own.
Nyuki? But he had been in a separate holding cage. A small panic whirred inside her. The two cages had different entrances and locks, making it unlikely that both chimps had escaped. Something must have gone wrong inside the building.
Topics/Categories:
animal behavior, Animal Welfare, Betrayal, Chimpanzees, Dysfunctional families, Ethics, Love, Obsession, Primates, Siblings, Substance Abuse
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Original Publish Date:
February 28, 2008
Formats and associated ISBNs:
978-0-89587-353-8 0-89587-353-2
Reading Guides:
http://www.trutor.net/Captivity%20Questions.html http://www.blairpub.com/fiction/captivityrgg.pdf
Formats:
Hardcover
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