One would think that catching a panda bear would be easy: They are slow-moving, rather docile and, well, they’re cute.

The first live giant panda to be captured, however, wasn’t apprehended until 1936, when Quentin Young and Ruth Harkness found a baby panda in a hollow tree near China’s Sichuan-Tibetan border.

Michael Kiefer’s “Chasing the Panda” recounts this tale and delves into the lives of all those surrounding the first successful attempt to bring a live panda back from China.

Quentin and Ruth became acquainted through Young’s brother, Jack Young, who was a naturalist, hunter and guide in Sichuan. Jack had led Ruth’s husband, Bill, on his own quest to find and bring back a giant panda, which ended with Bill’s death. It is this quest that Ruth was determined to finish.

When Ruth decided to pick up where her husband left off, Quentin was recommended by Jack to be her guide.

After a great deal of time spent rounding up Bill’s old equipment scattered around Sichuan, a grueling 1,500-mile trek through sparsely populated mountain ranges and a love affair, the pair stumbled upon a giant panda cub (as opposed to a red panda, which is a different and more common species) whimpering in a tree.

Finding the panda and returning it to America was only the beginning of the adventure. For Quentin and Ruth, the very fact that they “found” the panda was contested by hunter and arch-rival of Ruth, and World War II ravaged China and Indochina, sweeping Jack and Quentin along as an officer and a spy, respectively.

“Chasing the Panda” is mostly told from the perspective of Quentin, a friend of the author who is still living, and information was also taken from interviews of Jack and acquaintances of Ruth.

Ruth wrote a book called “The Lady and the Panda” in which Quentin’s role is underplayed, and “Chasing the Panda” is largely the author’s attempt at setting the record straight.

The format of the book was hodgepodge, awkwardly juxtaposing the narratives of both Jack and Quentin together, which made forming a timeline of the figures involved in the book very difficult. Often, I had no sense of what exactly was going on or where things were happening.

Kiefer’s writing was completely devoid of passion, coming off as dry and at times boring. When anecdotes are inserted into the retelling, they seem unnecessary and pointless and don’t do much to give a better description of the story at hand.

An abundance of apropos pictures interspersed throughout the story helped in placing names to faces and alleviated some of the confusion I encountered due to how the account was organized.

Following the chapter about the expedition to find the panda, Kiefer goes on to tell how Ruth, Quentin and Jack ended up in life, which contained many stories more interesting than the premise of the book. This update, though boring at times, did much to give each person an identity outside of what they are known for.

The idea for the book piqued my interest, and Kiefer’s reasons for writing it commendable, but his too matter-of-fact style and lackluster tone hindered the book from becoming much more than a monotone history lesson.