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| The Way Out: A True Story of Ruin and Survival | 
| Author: Craig Childs
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $9.73
You Save: $5.22 (35%)
New (5) from $9.73
Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 1242222
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.3 x 1.2
Dewey Decimal Number: 917.9
ASIN: B000Y8U5KS
Publication Date: March 8, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 6-9 of 9 | | « PREV | | |
 boring, boring , boring. April 29, 2005
7 out of 14 found this review helpful
I read this book based upon the reviews listed here and was very disappointed. What were these reviewers thinking? This book was tremendously boring. I never really got the feeling that they were in danger. Im sure they were but it didnt come across too well. And there were just too many metaphors. One after another. I never could identify with either hiker. I had no image in my mind of what they looked like. Too many flashbacks I didnt really care about their past experiences. If i wanted cop stories i would take out a cop book from the library(i dont buy books). This book cant compare to books like Into Thin Air and Skeletons across the Zahara. Please read either one. They were fantastic.
 Life In The Stone March 21, 2005
16 out of 17 found this review helpful
Craig Childs explores and describes the canyon country of the Colorado Plateau like no one else can. In "The Way Out", Childs and a friend navigate through a maze of canyons incised deeply into the Navajo Sandstone of northern Arizona. This could be just another wilderness adventure, a book to sit beside the countless other wilderness essays on bookstore shelves, but it is not: I have seen the land Craig Childs navigates in this book, a land of twisted canyons so disturbingly chaotic that I feel tremors in my solar plexus whenever I see it, and I have never had the courage to try to cross it.
As they struggle through the twisted canyons, Childs flashes back to his turbulent relationship with his father, and he describes his friend's long and torturous career as a police officer. At first I found these flashbacks to be too personal and intimate; I was almost embarrassed for Childs' inability to keep these deeply personal thoughts to himself. As their adventure progresses, though, these past experiences come alive in the stone, creating a web of life and continuum whose lessons are seen at every turn. In his final act, Childs takes his father's ashes into the desert where he intends to release them in the only place where he can find peace. A storm blows up though, and his father's ashes are taken by the wind and the crash of lightening. This seems to prove to him that his struggles through nature are the same as his struggles with his father: enigmatic; tempestuous; dichotomous.
"The Way Out" is a powerful story of emotion and survival in the wilderness of the land and of the mind.
the meaning of lost February 28, 2005
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
Rebeccasreads highly recommends THE WAY OUT as an "Amazing Grace" vision quest that is both hair-raising & immensely satisfying.
Anyone who has read Craig Childs' other books, such as THE SECRET KNOWLEDGE OF WATER or SOUL OF NOWHERE knows this man knows the desert. This time, however, the spectacular wilderness gets the better of him.
Or perhaps that's what vision quests are all about: to walk through the valley of your own death to come out the other side, pounds lighter, with a clearer focus on who you are, where you came from & where you're going.
Craig Childs writes like Georgia O'Keeffe paints -- spare, brilliant & memorable.
Fascinating November 21, 2004
7 out of 11 found this review helpful
Craig Childs and Dirk Vaughn have trekked together the United States for ten years, but as they drive in Utah to their latest starting point feels different. The plan is to hike the canyons of the American Southwest deserts where practically nothing lives for two weeks. Both men understand theoretically the danger of this quest as they carry as much food with them as possible because living off the land is impossible as even vegetation is scarce. This is survivor at its fittest as Craig and Dirk know maps are not very specific, the terrain is unfriendly, and they have no exit strategy.
On the wilderness journey, the men think back to what led them to this seemingly insane potentially deadly trip especially when they see early on the bleached bones of someone who failed to make it. Each reflects on their past: fights in bars and insane risk taking culminating with a need to prove themselves.
Both the journey and the surprising flashbacks grip the audience who take each dangerous step along aside the two explorers. --we discover the surprising legacy of violence that each man is escaping. Displaying candor Craig Childs pulls no punches as he exposes himself and Dirk to the scrutiny of true life tale advocates for he could have hidden the background and told a tale of two intrepid men undertaking the quest in a Sir Edmund Hilary context of it is there. Instead genre readers obtain a powerful biographical adventure tale that will haunt readers when they follow the why of needing the cleansing of the souls.
Harriet Klausner
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Wildlife, nature and the Environment
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