Captivity - Hardcover

Debbie Lee Wesselmann is the author of Trutor & the Ballooonist, which was named by Amazon.com as one of the top ten small press books of 1997, and The Earth and the Sky. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Fairleigh Dickinson University, she lives in Pennsylvania, where she teaches English at Lehigh University.

A South Carolina chimpanzee sanctuary affiliated with a university provides the unusual setting for Wesselmann's powerful second novel (after 1997's Trutor & the Balloonist). Dana Armstrong, a primatologist, acquired her understanding of chimpanzees at great personal cost, having been raised along with her younger brother, Zack, with a female chimp as a sibling (they communicated using sign language) until a tragic event ended the experiment. Now she must deal with an even more traumatic event. One day Dana arrives at the sanctuary, where she's the director, to discover that someone has damaged buildings and released chimpanzees unadapted to the wild. As Dana battles to save the sanctuary, personal and professional jealousies, campus politics, the fate of the chimpanzees and the stirring stories of Dana and her family play out in unforgettable fashion. With empathetic insight, the author precisely observes both human and animal behavior. --Publishers Weekly (starred)

Wesselmann, Debbie Lee. Captivity. Blair. Feb. 2008. c.300p. ISBN 978-0-89587-353-8. $22.95.

Primatologist Dana Armstrong is passionate about making a difference in the lives of the animals living at a South Carolina chimpanzee sanctuary. But a break-in resulting in the escape of numerous chimpanzees forces Dana to not only determine who was responsible for the vandalism but also deal with her traumatic memories of the past for Dana is a survivor of a psychological experiment, raised as a child with a chimp named Annie. She now faces opposition from the local community, political pressure from her university, and a ghost from her past who is bent upon her destruction. To further complicate matters, Dana's seldom-seen rogue brother appears on her doorstep, and a handsome journalist tugs at her heartstrings. Novelist Wesselmann (Trutor and the Balloonist; The Earth and the Sky) has once again combined a riveting plot with exciting characters to hold you spellbound until the last page. This novel, which raises many ethical and moral considerations, is most timely. On October 30, 2007, a chimpanzee named Washoe died at the age of 42. He was the first nonhuman known to communicate in a human language. [For your reading group, you might want to pair this with Elizabeth Hess's nonfiction Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human. Ed.] Melody Ballard, Pima Cty. P.L., Tucson, AZ --Library Journal (starred)