Plant Teacher

Plant Teacher is a 2011 novel by Ellen Alderton writing as Caroline Alethia.^[1] It has been recognized by various indie awards including finalist in the International Book Awards,^[2] runner up in the Green Book Festival,^[3] honorable mention in the Hollywood Book Festival,^[4] honorable mention in the Paris Book Festival,^[5] and honorable mention in the Halloween Book Festival.^[6] It was a winner of the best travel/essay fiction category in the 2012 Global Ebook Awards.^[7]

The novel, portraying a group of American expatriates in Bolivia living against the backdrop of an Evo Morales administration aggrandizing power, has been described as "powerful" and a "must-read" by Huffington Post contributor Joel Hirst. Hirst remarks, "...it is clear that the author -- who herself spent time in Bolivia -- was forced like so many Americans who live overseas to make sense of their experiences and the things they witnessed."^[8]

Plot

Plant Teacher begins in 1972 when a hippie in Oakland, California flushes a syringe of LSD down a toilet in anticipation of a police raid. Thirty-five years later, the wayward drug paraphernalia has found its final resting place in a marsh in Los Yungas, Bolivia, the umbilical cord between the Andes and Amazonia. Along the journey, the syringe has taken on super-potent homeopathic powers, and unbeknownst to the locals who use flora from the marsh to make traditional potions, the essence exuded from the syringe causes hallucinations.

In the meantime, two young Americans, Cheryl Lewis and Martin Banzer, have come to Bolivia for opposite reasons. Martin wishes to come to terms with his past and with the recent death of his Bolivian father. Cheryl wishes to forge a strong career and a future in La Paz. Martin is wealthy and introverted; Cheryl is of modest means and outgoing. The two form an unlikely friendship against the backdrop of a country teetering at the brink of dictatorship and revolution.

The book has a large cast of characters including Martin’s seven siblings and his mother, Carmen; a missionary to Bolivia, Gus; Cheryl’s boyfriend back in the United States, Jonathan; Merci, Cheryl’s half-Bolivian and half-Canadian boss; and the Lilas, Cheryl’s host family in Bolivia.

Bolivia sparks the taste for adventure in the two main characters and Martin finds himself experimenting with indigenous hallucinogenic plants while Cheryl flits from one personal relationship to another. When Martin experiences permanent hallucinations after a trip to the Brazilian jungle to try a local drug, caapi, (also known as a “plant teacher” because it is derived from a plant and supposedly imparts spiritual insight), he blames his visions on the caapi. Little does he know that he has actually permanently infected himself by drinking from a potion bottle he purchased at Lake Titicaca made from vegetation from the syringe-infested swamp.

Over Christmas, Martin’s overbearing older sister, Karen, takes Martin back to the Brazilian jungle where he had his caapi experience in order to secure a sample of the drug and have it tested. The tests however, prove inconclusive and do not suggest a course of treatment for Martin’s hallucinations.

Martin turns to Cheryl for help with his disturbing visions and she conducts a robust interview with him and, in the style of Alfred Adler, interprets his early memories. The result of this Adlerian analysis concludes that Martin has always had a tendency not to look before he leaps, and he also has difficulty entering into intimate relationships with women.

In the meantime, Bolivia’s political environment is decaying as the president aggrandizes ever more power and reacts violently to legal protests. Martin and Cheryl are forced to leave Bolivia as its relations with the United States worsen. On the eve of Cheryl’s departure, the two make love. Martin hopes that this will be the beginning of a serious relationship, but Cheryl is ambivalent about the idea.

In Martin’s hotel room, Cheryl admires the collection of potions that Martin has acquired during his time in Bolivia. She drinks from one of the small bottles that is supposed to bring luck in love. Little do the two know that this is the bottle that has been tainted by the homeopathic syringe of LSD. Although the two main characters do not realize it, the reader is left with the understanding that Cheryl will now permanently experience disturbing hallucinations, just as Martin does.^[9]

References