Paradise Lust

June 13, 2011
Wilensky-Lanford, whose essays have appeared in Salon, Killing the Buddha, and The Exquisite Corpse, has carved her literary niche as a "private investigator with an open mind," exploring myth and the human social psyche. In her first book, she confronts a foundational Western myth, the Garden of Eden, and humanity's constant search to return there. Part adventure story, part historical narrative, Wilensky-Lanford spins the history of explorers who searched for the Garden's precise earthly coordinates. With adept, well-researched prose, she traces how, from four verses in Genesis naming four rivers flowing from the Garden, scientists and pseudo-scientists, preachers and theologians, have claimed "scientific proof" of Paradise's locationâin Iraq, Sri Lanka, the Seychelles, Florida, Ohio, the North Pole, and elsewhere. Though quick-witted and quirky, Wilensky-Lanford isn't satisfied with asking only "where," she also deftly explores "why?" After traveling the globe on her Paradise quest, she arrives at the stump of "Adam's Tree" in a contested zone near Basra, Iraq, meditating not so much on the Garden, but on humanity's first steps from it.