Pangolin Problems

Daniel Quirk, a librarian at a Catholic university, was suspended for insufficient adherence to Woke while defending Catholicism. Zhang “Minnie” Meixing is a Chinese dissident on the run from the Chinese Communist Party. Lin Haoyu is a young CCP apparatchik unknowingly selling his soul for party advancement and a Mont Blanc pen.

Earth Dragon Run, a novel by David Pinault, brings them together at a South African animal rescue center.

Daniel, known as Danny, Quirky Quirk, or DQ, was at loose ends after being suspended from his job at Holy Trinity University for an ineffectual counterprotest of a Black Lives Matter protest. At 70, bookish Danny is not much for anything other than his books. On an impulse he volunteers to help at Steenbokskral, an animal rescue center in South Africa. There, he meets Zhang Meixing, another volunteer.

She has a price on her head: 1 million Hong Kong Dollars ($128,500US). As one of the Hong Kong Nine, she led anti-communist protests in Hong Kong. She escaped after a CCP crackdown, first to Vietnam, and from there to South Africa.

The Chinese want her back. The rescue center borders a mine owned by the Chinese-African Friendship Mining Corporation. It is as much about friendship as the Affordable Care Act is about affordable health care. They stint their employees’ safety equipment, illegally poach wildlife, and smuggle bushmeat and captured dissidents back to China.

Lin Haoyu, an idealistic, true-believing Communist, is on his first assignment outside China. The most junior Chinese on the CAFMC staff, he is offered a chance to move up in the Party hierarchy if he can convince Zhang Meixing to return to China. He gets the reward if successful.

Hayou cannot kidnap Meixing. However, if he can convince her to enter the CAFMC compound, they can smuggle her back to China from there. Meixing is caring for a pangolin. When she refuses to go to the compound, the Chinese kidnap the pangolin, knowing Meixing will try to rescue it.

The plot to capture Meixing fails, thanks to the other volunteers from the rescue center. However, the Chinese succeed in making off with the pangolin, so Meixing goes off to Southeast Asia to rescue it. Soon Danny is off to rescue Meixing.

Earth Dragon Run offers an amusing and quirky adventure, one examining the meaning of faith and the importance of human dignity. It pits individuality and freedom against totalitarian socialism.

“Earth Dragon Run,” by David Pinault, Ignatius Press, 2025, 416 pages, $18.95 (paperback), $18.95 (ebook)

This review was written by Mark Lardas, who writes at Ricochet as Seawriter. Mark Lardas, an engineer, freelance writer, historian, and model-maker, lives in League City, TX. His website is marklardas.com.