The plant hunter A scientist's quest for nature's next medicines

Review by Booklist Review

Where will the next miracle treatment for a new, staph-resistant superbug or COVID-like virus come from? A verdant jungle or spongy swamp is just as likely an answer as a pharmaceutical lab. Such is the field of ethnobotany, the science of combing through the connections between humans and the rest of nature to discover native plants with life-improving medicinal properties. Inspired by her own daunting experiences with the health care system following a childhood below-the-knee amputation to correct a congenital defect, Quave travelled from Albania to the Amazon, foraging for rare plants while forging her career and merging marriage and motherhood with grant-writing and oral presentations. Trekking through unforgiving terrain on her prosthetic leg, Quave learned that hunting elusive fungi was often less challenging than chasing down scarce funding for research programs. In the war against infectious diseases, Quave is a fierce combatant, exhibiting focused determination, admirable flexibility, and persuasive enthusiasm in this candidly personal narrative about overcoming physical and professional obstacles in her dedicated pursuit of innovative medical advancements.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Ethnobotanist Quave blends memoir, botany, and anthropology in her spirited, globe-trotting debut. "Since the 1980s no new chemical classes of antibiotics have been discovered and successfully brought to market," Quave writes: "That's where I come in." Born without several bones in her right leg and foot, Quave spent time in and out of hospitals, where she nearly died of a staph infection before antibiotics saved her life. This sparked her interest in medicine, and Quave traces her journeys across the globe in search of plant information: she travels to the Amazon, where she receives an herb bath from a healer and reconsiders her relationship to medicine; to southern Italy where she studies the dietary habits of Albanian immigrants; to a Mediterranean island to collect plants in danger of disappearing, such as "purple flowering" Daphne sericea; and into her labs, where she tests her plants against antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Her survey is packed with facts--readers will learn that they have willow trees to thank for Advil, that the cocoa plant is where numbing medication comes from, and the Madagascar periwinkle is the source for a chemotherapy drug. Nature-minded readers will find themselves immersed in--and inspired by--Quave's poignant tale. Agent: Elias Altman, Massie & McQuilkin. (Oct.)

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Review by Library Journal Review

Ever since Quave (host of the podcast Foodie Pharmacology) was in college and then graduate school at Emory (where she now teaches medical ethnobotany and curates the herbarium), she has devoted her time to discovering new plant-based medicines. She has traveled the world, from her native Florida to the Amazon rain forest to Ginestra in southern Italy, to collect and catalogue plant specimens and talk to local healers about the uses of their native flora. With vivid insight and occasional humor, Quave's book combines memoir with science history to discuss her love of nature and her entry into ethnobotany (a field that's dedicated to the exploration of links between food and medicine). Quave also describes her experiences as a woman with disability; she was born with a rare bone disorder, which has led to numerous surgeries and infections requiring treatment. She writes about meeting her husband in Italy, having three children, helping to raise her nephew, and teaching and conducting research all the while. VERDICT Quave's inviting memoir demonstrates grit and determination and explains some of the fascinating and critical uses of plants for healing (including possible uses against antimicrobial resistance and even COVID-19).--Marcia G. Welsh, formerly at Dartmouth Coll. Lib., Hanover, NH

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Searching for new drugs in old folkways. Ethnobotanist and microbiologist Quave, a professor and herbarium curator at Emory, shares a fascinating account of her development as a scientist, her research into the pharmacological potential of plants used in traditional medicine, the challenge of balancing work with motherhood, and her lifelong struggle with disability and infection. Born with a congenital defect that left her right leg underdeveloped--the fibula was "totally missing"--Quave had her leg amputated below the knee when she was 3, resulting in a staph infection that would have killed her if not for antibiotics. As she grew up, she required 20 more surgeries and often was hospitalized with infections. Her health problems made her acutely aware of the power of antibiotics and the peril of bacterial resistance. "We're facing a double crisis in the battle against superbugs," she writes, "the loss of effective antibiotics and the cataclysmic failure of the economic model that supports their discovery and development." Despite being physically compromised, Quave has mounted research expeditions to rugged, biodiverse hot spots around the world in search of some of the 33,443 plant species used in medicine; of these, she notes, no more than a few hundred have been rigorously investigated. The author details the painstaking process of gathering, transporting, preparing, and analyzing plant samples to test whether or not ethnobotanical research actually could lead to discovery of drugs. She also describes the arduous competition for grant money, where being a woman often put her at a disadvantage. Throughout her career, Quave has encountered bullying, sexism, and outright sexual harassment, and her scientific accomplishments have been undervalued. Science, she notes with regret, has become a "blood sport" among powerful men. Without generous funding for research into superbugs and infectious diseases, Quave warns, humans will find themselves increasingly at the mercy of viruses and bacteria they cannot control. A highly compelling--and alarming--memoir. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Chapter 1 My Leg and the Wilderness You only live twice: Once when you are born And once when you look death in the face. Ian Fleming, You Only Live Twice, 1964 I'm descended from a long line of Quaves, running all the way back to Juan de Cuevas, born in Alg++mitas, Spain, in 1762, who settled in what is now known as Harrison County, Mississippi. He married into the French Canadian Ladner family that had settled in the region, and they made their home on Cat Island, raising twelve children. To this day, their descendants carry a number of similar surnames-Cuevas, Coueves, Quave, and Queve. The name on my line of the family is pronounced kwave (rhymes with wave). We've always been people of the land. My father, Raymond, grew up on Quave Street in Biloxi, which, at one time, was entirely inhabited by close relatives. Daddy's father, J. L., was a stumper. Back in the 1920s, colossal longleaf pines (Pinus palustris, Pinaceae) throughout the south were clear-cut and used to build the homes and businesses of small towns that popped up along the coastline and interior of Florida. These evergreen trees sport the longest needlelike leaves of any pine in the world and proudly stand between eighty and one hundred feet tall. After trees were felled, the stumps stayed behind. J. L. and his sons used bulldozers to push the stumps out of the ground and then blew them up with dynamite, blasting them into small enough pieces for grinding at the stump mill. The Hercules Powder Company had such a mill located on the Peace River in DeSoto County, Florida. After being washed, the stumps were ground into chips and steamed to extract turpentine and other by-products like nitroglycerin and black powder. Stumping was an essential part of clearing the land following the timber harvest and creation of arable land for agricultural use. It was not easy work. My uncle Tommy lost several fingers playing with a hammer and a dynamite blasting cap as a kid, and another close member of J. L.'s work crew, Bo, died when a chain carrying heavy equipment broke and crushed him in the semitruck cab. Daddy grew up working outdoors, welding together pieces of scrap metal both as an artistic outlet and as a means to repair pieces of the business's bulldozers, tractors, and excavators. After the family moved from Mississippi to Florida, Daddy and his brothers became well known for their wild days of drag racing cars and trying to outrun the police. One of my uncles even served on a chain gang after being caught by a policeman. At the age of twenty in 1969, Daddy made his first trip overseas, trading the swamplands of Florida for those of Vietnam. He served in the First Infantry, Eleventh Brigade, Company B, Third Battalion, Americal Division, Central Highlands. He trekked through miles of jungle recently defoliated by dioxin, or Agent Orange-a powerful herbicide sprayed by US military forces to eliminate forest cover and crops of the North Vietnamese and Vietcong troops. In late July 1970, his machine gun locked and loaded, he was on top of an armored personnel carrier (APC) with four other friends in his squad, their eyes on alert as they surveyed the horizon, sweat dripping down their backs. Six other members of his platoon rode inside the APC. They were positioned in North Vietnam, north of the Quaúng Ng