LEAFING THROUGH an old magazine published by Chicago's Brookfield Zoo, Vicki Croke came across the unlikely mention of a Manhattan socialite and dress designer. Ruth Harkness, she read, had undertaken an arduous expedition to the border between China and Tibet, beating a pack of male competitors in an unusual race. Harkness was the first person to bring a giant panda to the west.
'The whole thing sounded straight out of a Hollywood film,' Croke says of the article she read 12 years ago. 'But, incredibly, it was true. I looked for a book about Harkness, but couldn't find one. Then I asked all my contacts in the zoo world. But no one knew very much. I thought, 'How could this be, that no one knows about an American socialite who brought a giant panda back from China?' Then I realised I'd have to write about her myself if I wanted to satisfy my curiosity.'
This month, Croke released The Lady and the Panda: The True Adventures of the First American Explorer to Bring Back China's Most Exotic Animal (Random House). Croke, 46, has covered pets and wildlife for more than a decade as the 'animal beat' columnist for the Boston Globe newspaper. She's also the author of The Modern Ark: The Story of Zoos - Past, Present and Future. Croke acknowledges that her second book, given her field, should have been about a four-footed creature, but in Harkness she found a human subject she couldn't resist.
Her admiration for the intrepid female adventurer began after reading Harkness' 1938 memoir, The Lady and the Panda. Croke had ordered a second copy of the book for what seemed the exorbitant sum of US$52, but as soon as she opened the book, she stopped feeling guilty.
'I broke out in goose bumps and read the book from start to finish,' Croke says. 'Ruth was a remarkable person, unusually modern in her thinking and completely fearless. That may have been the first adventure story from that period that contained not a single bit of racism. Nothing was overlooked, which is astonishing.'
But the memoir covered only one year of the party girl-turned explorer's life. 'Everything else was a mystery, but I had a million more questions - not just about her life before and after that book, but the year in China, as well,' Croke says.
Gradually, like putting together the pieces of a puzzle, Croke began reconstructing Harkness' life. As she did, 'the story grew richer, more fantastical, and more moving'.