Some lives are movies waiting to be made. They have a clear narrative line that can be shaped into a dramatically coherent, even suspenseful, form. Other lives are picture books waiting to be browsed. They produce unforgettable images, but they resist the storyteller's connective art.
Dian Fossey was a figure of the latter sort. She went to Rwanda in east- central Africa as a child of the '60s, hoping to find a bit of adventure by observing an endangered subspecies, the mountain gorilla. In 1985 she was murdered, under mysterious circumstances, at the research station she had built up for nearly...