THE FRUIT HUNTERS: A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce and Obsession.
Adam Leith Gollner. Scribner. 267 pages. $25.
In his first book, Adam Leith Gollner offers enough historical facts, horticultural wonders and real-life adventures of fruit fanatics past and present to fill a thousand and one summer nights with delightful reading.
The book begins with a trip to Brazil designed to help him forget his grandfather's recent death, a close relative's manic depression, his best friend's suicide attempt and his break-up with his girlfriend of eight years, who at the start of his narrative is spending New Year's in Europe with her new French lover.
Gollner, a magazine writer, filmmaker and musician, is looking for some heavy-duty diversion. But overwhelmed by the heat, dirt and poverty of Rio de Janeiro, Gollner decides that ''Rio isn't quite the fantasyland of Bossa Nova melodies and paradisiacal seascapes I had envisioned.'' But Brazil's exotic fruits captivate him, and he starts noting the names of them all, repeating them over and over again. ``Softly chanting, I close my eyes, and feel a sense of peace.''
In analyzing how famous authors such as Alexandre Dumas and D.H. Lawrence became obsessed with fruits, Gollner offers a clue as to what transpired with his own research and writing on the subject. ''I also went off the deep end to get to the core of fruits,'' he confesses. 'Wanting to understand these fruit votaries' passion, I spent months combing through any book that contained the word 'fruit' in index searches.''
His budding interest leads him on a journey around the world. He encounters many bizarre characters, some who even believe that they can live on fruit alone and have devoted their lives to proving that theory.
The Fruit Hunters is arranged in four parts: Nature, Adventure, Commerce and Obsession. Several passages are of special interest to South Florida readers, including a section on Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden's William F. Whitman's Tropical Fruit Pavilion, which opened in 2003.
One intriguing chapter explores the mysteries of miraculin, a plant so otherworldly that it can make lemons taste sweet and such a threat to the sugar industry that it has never been commercialized in the United States but nonetheless is available at a few Florida nurseries and restaurants, including Palm Beach's Four Seasons Resort.
The little red berry isn't terribly flavorful, but the glycoprotein that it contains coats the sweet-sensitive sites on the tongue and, when activated by sour foods, stimulates ''a cascade of molecular events resulting in an electrical signal in the nerve'' that makes the brain experience a sweet sensation. Richard Wilson of Florida's Excalibur Nurseries gives the berries to cancer patients, since it counteracts chemotherapy nausea, and also sells it to eager customers who believe it enhances sex.
Though the The Fruit Hunters is packed with countless unbelievable facts about obscure fruit varieties and agricultural history, it often reads more like an encyclopedia than a book, with an at-times disjointed narrative structure. A more straightforward approach might have been more appealing, but there's no denying that this book is ripe with captivating information.
Brenda Krebs is a Miami Herald business editor.
