ANTHILL: A Novel

2010, 381 pages, fiction. Inspirational and magical story of a boy who grows up determined to save the world from its most savage ecological predator: Man himself. The saga follows the adventures of a modern-day Huck Finn, whose improbable love of the “strange, beautiful, and elegant” world of ants ends up transforming his own life and the citizens of Nokobee County. Battling both snake bites and cynical relatives who just don’t understand his consuming fascination with the outdoors, Raff Cody explores the pristine beauty of the Nokobee wildland. In doing so, he witnesses the remarkable creation and destruction of four separate ant colonies (“The Anthill Chronicles”), becoming a young naturalist in the process.

An extraordinary undergraduate at Florida State University, Raff, despite his scientific promise, opts for Harvard Law School, believing that the environmental fight must be waged in the courtroom as well as the lab. Returning home a legal gladiator, he grows increasingly alarmed by rapacious condo developers who are eager to pave and subdivide the wildlands surrounding the Chicobee River. But one last battle awaits him in his epic struggle. In a shattering ending that no reader will forget, Raff encounters the angry and corrupt ghosts of an old South he thought had all but disappeared, and learns that “war is a genetic imperative,” not only for ants but for men as well.

Part thriller, part parable, Anthill will not only transfix readers with its stunning twists and startling revelations, but will provide readers with new insights into the meaning of survival in our rapidly changing world. Hardcover; 6 x 8-1/2″.

About the author – Regarded as one of the world’s preeminent biologists and naturalists, Edward O. Wilson grew up in south Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, where he spent his boyhood exploring the region’s forests and swamps, collecting snakes, butterflies, and ants—the latter to become his lifelong specialty. The author of more than twenty books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Ants and The Naturalist as well as his first novel Anthill, Wilson, a professor at Harvard, makes his home in Lexington, Massachusetts.