A PANGOLIN SLEPT ON BUDDHA’S LAP

An adventurous wildlife conservationist accepts a “promotion” that forces him to confront the evils rooted in human nature and discover the dignity that inspires transcendence. With a heavy heart, Wolf Vandengetz leaves his lions in the Serengeti to administer a program to save Nepal’s pangolins, a bizarre mammal covered with scales. As a scientist, he’s accustomed to solving complex ecosystem mysteries, but ill-equipped to tackle the politics of donation-hungry NGOs, the tragic consequences of conservation strategies imposed from above, or the greed driving pangolins to extinction. On a mission beset with unpredictable twists, his initiative to outsmart poachers lands him in a hornet’s nest of corruption. With his fate tied to the fate of the endangered pangolin, he draws on everything he has learned: his wildlife fieldwork, the tactics of activists combating animal trafficking, scientific reason infused with Buddhist philosophy, and the age-old wisdom of indigenous tribes.