Thank you to Grand Central Pub for the gifted book that I read in partnership with the audio from my library.
Seeking the Missing in North America's Wildlands
by: Jon Billman
narrated by: Stephen Graybill rating: really liked
The number of missing persons that have vanished from exploring the wilderness is astonishing. It really highlights how vast and wild parts of our country still are.
Using the story of the disappearance of Jacob Gray to anchor the exploration of this phenomenon of vanishing, Billman reflects on how the disappearance of someone oftentimes becomes less about the missing and more about the people that miss them. I really appreciated Billman's friendship with Jacob's father Randy as it grew and flourished under their shared quest to find Jacob. Billman writes of not only his fondness for Randy, but how Randy shaped the search for Jacob and Billman's research into the missing.
An interesting facet of this look into the world of the missing and the searching is how the greatest allies to the families who are searching are oftentimes the people that the rest of society has so easily dismissed. These are the eccentrics who are psychics or into searching for Bigfoot and UFOs among other things. These people are consistent safe havens of hope for those who are searching. Everybody just wants to find a place to belong, and these communities are providing that for other searchers. They don't have to be looking for the same thing, but just on a similar trajectory.
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