In the 1940s, the eminent British botanist John Heslop Harrison proposed a controversial theory: Vegetation on the islands off the west coast of Scotland, he said, had survived the last Ice Age. His premise flew in the face of what most botanists believed, that no plants had been able to live through the 10,000-year period of extreme cold, but he said that he had proof -- the plants and grasses found on the Isle of Rum -- that would make his name in the scientific world. Harrison didn't anticipate, however, the tenacious John Raven, an amateur botanist who boldly questioned whether these grasses were truly indigenous to the area -- or whether they had been transported there and planted.

The stage is thus set for this enthralling tale of rival scientists and fraudulent science, a skillful whodunit that, in the hands of the talented Karl Sabbagh, joins the ranks of the best narrative nonfiction.