FINDING EVERETT RUESS The Life and Unsolved Disappearance of a Legendary Wilderness Explorer

Listening to the author’s obsession with 20-year-old poet and artist Everett Ruess, who in 1934 disappeared near Escalante, Utah, is as exhausting and disturbing as the author’s journey to uncover Ruess’s remains. Narrator Arthur Morey portrays Ruess’s youthful voice in readings from the journals and letters he wrote home, most of which fail to describe the “beauty” he sought and instead demand money from his parents to continue his solo adventures in the Wild West. Morey’s artful and honest presentation doesn’t ameliorate Roberts’s overwritten and tedious account, nor his quest, supported in part by The National Geographic Society, which ultimately, and embarrassingly, led to the unearthing of a Navajo grave he thought was Ruess’s burial site. K.P. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine [Published: SEPTEMBER 2011]