Take a trip into the Costa Rican cloud forest with this must-read ecological mystery! In their literary debut, twin brothers Trevor and Kyle Ritland employ their environmental storytelling expertise to recount the captivating tale of a lost species and unearth a contemporary extinction crisis. The Golden Toad hit shelves on June 17. Here’s what to know before picking up your copy!
Introducing Trevor and Kyle Ritland
Trevor Ritland spent two years in Costa Rica’s cloud forests before returning to the US to complete graduate work in science communication and documentary studies. He is an adjunct instructor at Northern Arizona University’s Creative Media & Film program. His work investigating environmental mysteries and endangered species has been published in Mongabay and Atlas Obscura. He lives in Flagstaff, Arizona, with his wife and daughter (plus their dog, Indie).
Kyle Ritland received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California, Riverside. As a freelance environmental journalist, he has written stories about big cats, desert birds, and island foxes and has been published in The Revelator and Blue Ridge Outdoors. He lives in the American Northeast with his wife and their two cats, Hazel and Fiver.
Together, the Ritland brothers established Adventure Term, Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to educating the next generation of environmental storytellers through field expeditions. As part of this venture, they have contributed to publications such as The Guardian, The Atlantic, and the BBC, and partnered with Leonardo DiCaprio’s conservation organization, Re:wild, on its “Search for Lost Species” initiative.
About The Golden Toad
Trigger Warning: This book contains mentions of pregnancy loss. Please exercise personal care while reading.
Then the golden toad would become a ghost, glimpsed in memory or as a phantasm of arcadia, and known only to a few who had witnessed its ethereal existence in the mystic forest high among the clouds. That story would be passed down in pieces, in fractured impressions and faded memories: lost tales told over a dying fire.
— Trevor and Kyle Ritland, The Golden Toad
The Golden Toad: An Ecological Mystery and the Search for a Lost Species by Trevor and Kyle Ritland is an inspired debut that attempts to unmask the culprit behind the peculiar vanishing of an extraordinary amphibian.
Trevor and Kyle Ritland’s fascination with the Costa Rican golden toad began at a young age when their biologist father showed them projector images of the striking species. For a few weeks each year, thousands of golden toads would convene in their native home in the continental divide above Monteverde’s cloud forests; there, they mated and deposited their offspring before once again withdrawing underground. Then, one year, they vanished. Since the toads’ disappearance over 30 years ago, rumors of alleged sightings by Monteverde locals have persisted, begging the question: Could the golden toad still be out there?
The Ritlands set out to answer this query in The Golden Toad. With the help of Costa Rican naturalists, Trevor and Kyle conduct their own journey into the Children’s Eternal Rainforest to search for potential survivors of the ecological crisis that imperiled, and possibly led to the extinction, of the golden toad.
What to Expect
In The Golden Toad, authors Trevor and Kyle Ritland weave several salient themes and threads to form an affecting whole. The story’s hook is the ecological mystery at its core: What happened to the golden toads? From that captivating premise emerge riveting revelations — not only about the golden toads themselves but also about our evolving environmental landscape and the hefty price of desire. Largely, it’s a story about loss (on both a personal and environmental level) and how we learn to live with it:
When we let go of the things that are gone, we can give our hearts to everything that’s left.
— Trevor and Kyle Ritland, The Golden Toad
In reflecting on the story of the golden toad, the Ritlands reckon with several topical issues. Their narrative exposes the devastating effects climate change and human disturbance can have on the natural world and reminds readers of their role in preserving it. In many ways, The Golden Toad is a tribute to a lost species and the numerous conservationists who fought to save it. Regardless of the toads’ probable extinction, Trevor and Kyle impart a hopeful message in their book: The legacy of this distinctive species lives on in the stories we tell about it, in the photographs and records that remain. By putting this story to paper, the Ritlands have certainly done their part in preserving the golden toads’ memory:
The golden toads were gone, but their stories would survive—emerging now and then from dark hollows when the patter of rain began again on green leaves in the mist, emerging from a den of secrets, bringing light back to the forest.
— Trevor and Kyle Ritland, The Golden Toad
Final Thoughts
Trevor and Kyle Ritland’s The Golden Toad combines rich research with personal reflection and professional testimony to document the perplexing disappearance of a remarkable amphibian. It also delves into the human psyche, asking why we’re so drawn to the elusive and whether satiating our curiosity is worth the cost of uncovering life’s mysteries.
If you’re in the market for a unique page-turner that will teach you something new about the environment, human nature, and maybe even yourself, The Golden Toad is the book for you! Purchase your copy today on Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, or Amazon.
For another intriguing nonfiction read, check out our review of Captain Kidd by Samuel Marquis!
Find The Golden Toad and more illuminating reads on our Nonfiction for the Enlightened Mind bookshelf on Bookshelf.org.
