Book: When the Killing's Done by T.C. Boyle

The North Channel Islands lie off the coast of southern California. Feral pigs and rats are invasive species that are to be totally eradicated: rats from Anacapa, and pigs on Santa Cruz. Alma Boyd Takesue is a scientist working for the National Park Service, overseeing and coordinating the killing, and this is mostly her story. She has public battles with animal rights activists, especially Dave LaJoy, a nasty character who is determined to sabotage the killings. She is a also a daughter and granddaughter of extraordinary women and Alma has a private life involving choices and outcomes apart from her work on the islands.

The author makes a story of Alma and the contentious issues that arise as the planning and process of eradication evolves during this period in her life, with chapters exploring the history of the islands, tales of shipwrecks and of the sheep that once grazed on Santa Cruz; he describes the wild beauty of these islands and how an equilibrium of species is always tenuous.

While Boyle wonderfully invents and writes his characters, I did not find the evil Dave LaJoy all that credible. How such a self-indulgent, angry man could care so much about rats and pigs didn't seem reasonable to me. But the point was that this interspecies "meddling" does occur, is not universally embraced, and protestors are often impassioned folk, not above using violence or defying the laws. There are always arguments to be made in defense of or against such actions of rearranging the flora or fauna in a given environment.

While the annihilation of a specific population of fauna on these islands was the underpinning of this novel, there is so much more that makes it rich and colorful and a pleasure to read.