“Point Last Seen: A Woman Tracker’s Story” by Hannah Nyala, Beacon Press, 168 pages.
Hannah Nyala worked with the National Park Service trying to find folks who were missing, after they wandered off the trails or tried to take a shortcut back to the parking lot.
She tells a little bit about what her work is like, advising that the tracker never steps forward without first seeing the next step or two a person makes. She talks about finding a young girl who got off track during a family camping trip. And she enthuses about taking her two children to Africa, where they learned from the Bushmen about the ancient techniques of tracking.
And that’s about all we get about tracking. The rest of the story is about her abusive ex-husband and how he threatened to kill her, how he took her children from her and how, later, they could tell he’d been in their house because the towels had been folded in thirds and placed straight on the racks.
And that’s about the size of this book.
If the reader had wanted to learn about an abused woman and what her life is like, he or she would have bought a book about that. But this is supposed to be about tracking, about finding people who are lost, about adventures in the national parks.
There ought to be a false advertising claim in here somewhere.
Folks buying this book will be taking the wrong track.
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April 18, 2024
