Into the Wild

Chris McCandless walked into the deep woods of Alaska in April 1992 and was never again seen alive. Through diaries, interviews with family and acquaintances, and accounts of witnesses, John Krakauer traces the young man's fatal adventure and the life journey that led him to his death in an abandoned bus. Philip Franklin presents the material in documentary fashion, with no characterizations and little emotional involvement. It works. The listener can imagine Franklin's voice under a television special; Krakauer's text fills in the pictures with ease. Franklin wisely chooses to become involved in the text, rather than trying to manipulate it. R.P.L. (c) AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine

January 1, 1996
After graduating from Emory University in Atlanta in 1992, top student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandoned his possessions, gave his entire $24,000 savings account to charity and hitchhiked to Alaska, where he went to live in the wilderness. Four months later, he turned up dead. His diary, letters and two notes found at a remote campsite tell of his desperate effort to survive, apparently stranded by an injury and slowly starving. They also reflect the posturing of a confused young man, raised in affluent Annandale, Va., who self-consciously adopted a Tolstoyan renunciation of wealth and return to nature. Krakauer, a contributing editor to Outside and Men's Journal, retraces McCandless's ill-fated antagonism toward his father, Walt, an eminent aerospace engineer. Krakauer also draws parallels to his own reckless youthful exploit in 1977 when he climbed Devils Thumb, a mountain on the Alaska-British Columbia border, partly as a symbolic act of rebellion against his autocratic father. In a moving narrative, Krakauer probes the mystery of McCandless's death, which he attributes to logistical blunders and to accidental poisoning from eating toxic seed pods. Maps. 35,000 first printing; author tour.

This is the courageous story of a young man's quest for adventure in the Alaskan wilderness and his eventual death as he surrenders to its power. Jon Krakauer faithfully recounts Chris McCandless's nomadic life through interviews with those who knew him; snippets of McCandless's journal; and gripping, personal narrative. Campbell Scott's characterizations of the many townsfolk and friends are splendid. Particularly notable is the apparent ease with which he switches from the narrator's steady delivery to a difficult combination of Scottish and Pennsylvania Dutch as Ron Franz. This audiobook not only tells a good story, but also teaches us a valuable maxim: "Nothing is more damaging to an adventurous spirit . . . than a secure future." R.A.P. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine