| Details | | Publication Date: | 1997-11-01 |
| Size | | Length: | 236 pages | | Height: | 9.8 in | | Width: | 6.3 in | | Thickness: | 1.0 in | | Weight: | 16.0 oz |
Publisher's Note
Prompted by his mother's death from breast cancer, ethnobotanist Paul Alan Cox traveled with his family to a remote Samoan village at the edge of a rain forest to search for new leads in treating the disease. Working closely with both native healers and the U.S. National Cancer Institute in an analysis of traditional rain-forest remedies, Cox discovered a promising new plant-derived drug, prostratin, for a different, but equally serious malady: AIDS. The promise of this new drug lead was soon overshadowed, however, by news that a logging company had started to destroy the 30,000-acre rain forest where Cox first collected the plant that yielded prostratin. It was then that the village elders began to instruct Cox in the legends of Nafanua, the Samoan goddess who in ancient times freed the people from oppression and taught them to protect the rain forest. Collaborating with the village elders eager to preserve the spirit of Nafanua's teachings, Cox launched an international campaign to stop the logging of the Falealupo Rain Forest. In Nafanua, he tells the moving story of those efforts, and his involvement in related campaigns to create a U.S. National Park in American Samoa and to place Samoa's endangered flying foxes under international protection. Nafanua explores the profound influence of Western colonialism and discusses the impact of historic misperceptions of the South Seas on appreciation of the dignity of its peoples. Nafanua is a testament to the power of nature to both heal and destroy - and to the equally powerful human capacity for faith and perseverance against seemingly impossible odds.
Industry Reviews
At age 19, Cox (coauthor of Plants, People, and Culture) spent two years in Western Samoa as a Mormon missionary. Twenty years later, Cox returned with his family, this time as a Brigham Young botany professor with a grant from the National Science Foundation to study medicinal plants. He selected a remote coastal village adjoining a lowland rain forest to provide data for his research. Cox's time there was well spent: not only did he make important botanical finds among the medicinal flora used by the natives (one, Prostratin, is being tested for treatment of hepatitis and AIDS), but he also became active in conservation. When logging threatens the habitat of a rare species of fruit bat or "flying fox," Cox succeeds in having it declared an endangered species. When the villagers have to choose between education for their children and losing more rain forest, Cox mounts an international campaign to save the forest as well as to provide funds for the school. None of this comes off here as mere do-goodism, as Cox becomes intensely involved with the people he lives among, and struggles to come to grips with the responsibilities of life on the island. His portrait of village life candidly discusses the role of missionaries and their effect on Samoan culture, and his recounting of local lore, such as that of the mysterious and deadly tanifa, a sea creature, is gripping. When a devastating hurricane destroys the village near the end of his stay, Cox soberly comprehends the depth of his commitment to the people and the land. (Dec.)
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