Finding Everett Ruess: The Life and Unsolved Disappearance of a Legendary Wilderness Explorer

Amazing story, full of compelling twists and turns. I got a little bogged down in the middle and struggled with motivation to keep going, yet something kept drawing me back; perhaps a little too much detail.

It is a story of a teenager seeking independence and the struggle of his parents to try to bring him back to the fold and live the life they wanted for him, yet they continued to send him financial support, even during through the financially-tight depression.

So tragic that such a talented young man was apparently lost to the world. It is incredible the impact of this young man had to maintain public interest and countless efforts to find him for more than eight decades.

I had never heard of Everett Ruess before this book, but now feel as if I've gone with him on part of his adventures. I appreciate how Roberts does his own research and doesn't rely on the opinions of others who have written about Everett before. The writing style is very good and draws the reader along through the details without languishing in them. Recommended for anyone who enjoys a biography and a bit of mystery.

This was an ARC First-Reads selection.

Thoroughly enjoyed this book. Read the Rusho materials when they came out. The only criticism I have is the usual....better maps! Otherwise, Roberts is literate, knowledgeable, informed, and any other adjectives that apply making him the perfect person to write this book. Read the book in just over 2 days on my way to, and at the Grand Canyon's South Rim while Sarah is in training.

I've read a number of David Robert's books and liked most of them (with a couple of exceptions) so I was happily surprised to find he was the author of "Finding Everett Ruess- the Life and Unsolved Disappearance of a Legendary Wilderness Explorer." The book had caught my interest a while ago due to the topic.

Everett Ruess was a 1930's version of Christopher McCandless... at the age of just 16, he started taking months long jaunts out in the wilderness of the southwest. He mysteriously disappeared in 1934 when he was just 20, and the youth's rapturous writings and woodblock prints of the natural world have build a bit of a cult around him. His body was never found.

Roberts does a pretty good job telling the story here... there were bits that were repetitive in the early narrative. The 1934 journal was lost! The 1934 journal was lost! His presentation of Ruess' story is mostly compelling though. I found I enjoyed the second half of the book more, when Robers focuses on the various searches for Ruess' remains over the years. Definitely a good read overall.

This is a moderately entertaining and educational look at the very short life of Everett Ruess, an itinerant wanderer who explored and traversed large parts of the Navajo reservation in the four corners area and the Sierra Nevada Mountains near Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks.

Ruess undertook his travels from the ages of 16 to 20 during the height of the Great Depression. In addition to being an explorer of sorts, he was also an artist, a poet, a diarist and a budding naturalist. Though something of a folk legend in the Southwest, he recently came to prominence through a passage included in Jon Krakauer’s book, Into the Wild.

This book uses as its primary source material, letters written by Ruess to friends and family as well as several surviving diaries kept by Ruess during his travels. While Ruess was certainly a unique individual, the sum total of his existence appears to be a restlessness that resulted in several prolonged periods of lonesome wanderings which left little impression, before disappearing in 1934 while in the wilds of southern Utah.

His writings reveal him to be extremely immature and something of a prig. For example, he scolds his older brother for accepting jobs that he deems beneath his dignity, while continuously demanding funds from his cash strapped parents, at the height of the Depression. Allowances must be made for his tender age, however, at age twenty such feelings of entitlement should either be resolved or justifiably accepted as a character fault. Having read this biography, I can safely say that I don’t care much for many of his affectations nor his attitude. I doubt he and I would get along well at all.

Throughout the book, the author parses the words of Ruess and engages in numerous instances of pop psychology which at times appear to be a reach, and at other times just silly. On several occasions, Ruess’s sexuality is made the subject of speculation, and despite numerous indications to the contrary, for some reason the author adamantly argues against the likelihood that Ruess was homosexual, or at least bi-sexual.

Much of the book centers upon the search for Ruess after his disappearance in 1934, as if he were some kind of celebrity, the world waiting with baited breath the latest word on his disappearance. This was not Amelia Earhart we are talking about. Prior to this book, I’d never heard of him and I suspect he same can be said for over 99.9% of Americans.

In my opinion, the most intriguing part of the book was the final segments, dealing with the discovery of a skeleton in the 21st century and the attempt to identify the remains as those of Ruess. The archeology, forensics and investigations involved in the effort were quite interesting and educational. Of great interest was the fact that numerous highly trained and well regarded forensic and archeological experts could be so stunningly and completely in error.

In any case, despite the proposition that Ruess was a budding John Muir and on the verge of accomplishing great things, the fact is that he accomplished very little in his short life, aside from squandering much of his parent’s hard earned money during a period when they could ill afford it. While the book contains some moderately entertaining and educational material on the areas explored by Ruess and the time of his sojourns, in the end he is really not a suitable subject for a book length biography. The 10-12 pages used by Krakauer pretty much covered everything you needed to know about Ruess. He was a restless kid that chafed under his parent’s dominion, sneaked away to be alone in the desert and ultimately died there. End of story.

Details the life and mysterious disappearance of the wandering 20 year old artist/poet/writer Everett Ruess who vanished in the remote Southwest desert near Comb Ridge in the early 1930's, but still inspires a cult following to this day. Being a dedicated desert rat who loves to hike Utah's dusty backcountry, I found this book absolutely fascinating. ER's writings remind me of Abbey and Thoreau combined and his art has no peer. Although it doesn't definitely solve the puzzle of "Nemo's" disappearance, this is a wonderful book I'd recommend to anybody who loves the great outdoors or prefers to travel the path less followed.

Not as intriguing as "Into The Wild," but a great story of the mysterious disappearance of Everett Ruess in the southwest.