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Title: The Way Out: A True Story of Ruin and Survival
ISBN: 0316107034
Author:
Craig Childs
Publicate Date: 2006-03-08
Publish: 2006-03-08
List Price: $14.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $4.79
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $2.14
Amazon Merchant Price: $11.21
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| Customer Review: |
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1: An Incredible Journey
The Way Out is a book you'll want to read over and over again. It's just too powerful to fully absorb in one reading. As with "The Secret Knowledge of Water", Mr. Childs leads you into the very psyche of Living Land. He bears his soul and humbles himself before a chasm of rock. An absolute master of imagery and metaphor, Mr. Childs doesn't just take you into the majesty of a canyon or the solitude of the desert, he empties you out there so that you might fill again. "The Way Out" is his best work yet.
Susan Haley, Author
RAINY DAY PEOPLE
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2: A hard-hitting account of discovery
A two-weep trip through the American Southwest with a good friends turns into a challenge which will test friendship and survival skills in THE WAY OUT: A TRUE STORY OF RUIN AND SURVIVAL. Any with a special affection for the Southwest will find vivid descriptions of its terrain and desolation as they enjoy this memoir of survival, a hit in hardcover and newly available in paperback to provide a hard-hitting account of discovery.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
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3: Take stock of what has happened along your own walk!
Where most people go to resorts or on a cruise for time away from their everyday lives, Craig Childs and his close friend and traveling companion Dirk Vaughn walk the desolate deserts, canyons and chasms of the American West.
The Way Out describes Childs' walk through a forgotten and imposing fracture in the crust of the earth rarely if ever seen by white people. The indigenous tribes through millennia have passed this way, but until Childs and Vaughn receive permission from an elder Dine shepherd, no one has walked this route in recent times.
Childs' style of writing is metaphorical. It engages you and makes one understand the element he is traveling like no other author I have read. It flows like prose from the early days of the last century when authors painted their stories with words.
In the short period of time that the two men spend in their search through this chasm, they reflect on the lives they have led that have brought them to this adventure. Childs' life is one of dark memories that would have pushed those without his outlook upon life to the depths of depression. In his compatriot Vaughn, we meet a man that has seen the distasteful underbelly of big city crime in his days as a police officer.
Yet neither man allows those past experiences to dampen their spirit in their quest to explore the forgotten realm in which they have intentionally placed themselves.
I must admit, I almost put this book down. But as I forged forward I began to understand the author's style and what he was trying to communicate.
Armchair Interviews says: The Way Out will make you take solitary stock of what has happened along your own walk through life.
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4: Let's talk about real survival
With all due respect (I find most of Craig's other books written with both elegance and restraint; amd his solo explorations acts of courage and surrender.), these two men went out for a month, with top-of-the-line gear, plenty of food (cached and otherwise) and, in fact, were in no real danger. A real survivor is a grandmother on food stamps, taking care of and loving five grand-kids, in a roach motel, with no vehicle and a greedy landlord.
Or a woman with a double mastectomy, who finds out she had bone cancer and decides it is time to learn how to drum because she has wanted to all her life, and knows each 3-month check-up might be her last.
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5: A gem. Childs delivers another masterpiece.
I loved this book, which is a feast for the soul. The novel profiles an inner and outer journey of two men through the most intense enviornment. Beyond the physical endurance required to pass this route, the 2 men reflect on their past struggles with socitenty, family and personal demons.
It's another incredible book by Childs, and I think marks a change in his writing style. Rather than a collection of journeys, this is a single story which becomes a lengend or tale.
Read this book. It reaches into the soul of men, in a way few contemporary stories can.
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