Review: "Trail of the Lost" by Andrea Lankford

Trail of the Lost" by Andrea Lankford
Published August 2023 via Hachette
★★★★

2015: A young man goes into the wilderness and disappears.
2016: A young man goes into the wilderness and disappears.
2017: A young man goes into the wilderness and disappears.

In Trail of the Lost, Lankford chronicles three disappearances on the Pacific Crest Trail—Chris Sylvia, Kris Fowler, and David O'Sullivan—and the efforts made to find them. A park-ranger-turned-nurse, she got involved in one of the unofficial searches almost by accident, but once she was in, she couldn't turn away.

I read Lankford's Ranger Confidential in 2016, and it left me with the sense that she had loved her work but was deeply burnt out by the time she left. This proved to be a better fit of a book for me, partly because I adore both thru-hiking books and search-and-rescue memoir, but also because Lankford is uniquely qualified to write it. Lankford more than had the qualifications to take part in the search efforts, and she proves here that she also has the research and writing skills to weave a very complicated story. This is three stories in one, mixed with numerous others—because inevitably, over the course of years of searching and researching, Lankford and the scrappy team of searchers she was involved with stumbled across, or were asked to investigate, other missing-persons cases. No spoilers, but what the investigations turned up varied widely.

Most missing-person cases in the wild are resolved quickly, but that was not to be the case for any of these three. It makes for a twisty and turny ride, with leads including a cult, multiple psychics, questionable science (read: the kind of science that the book is here to critique, not to promote), drone footage, solo accidents, accidents involving other people, and much more.

One thing that might turn some readers off: Lankford has a tendency of mentioning mental illness in the context of crime ("...a thirty-two year-old man with a history of mental illness..." (loc. 3148*); "...mentally ill fugitive..." (loc. 3638); "...attacked by a mentally deranged man" (loc. 4539); etc.). It's never a main point of the story, but then, neither is any of these individuals' mental health relevant to whatever parts of the story Lankford tells. Again, not a big enough part of the story for me to draw conclusions, but enough to mention...and to remind anyone who is still reading that people with mental illness are far more likely to be victims of violent crimes than to commit them themselves.

Overall, a fast and gripping read if you're drawn to wild spaces, mysteries, and stories taking place in the intersection of those things. May be of interest to readers of Kathryn Miles' Trailed and Jon Billman's The Cold Vanish.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

*I read an ARC, and quotes may not be final.