Title of the Book:  Into The Wild
 Author: John Krakauer
 # of Pages: 215
 Star Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆

 Review:

Why would a young college grad with a promising future leave friends, family, and possessions behind in order to venture solo into the Alaskan wilderness?  This is the question Jon Krakauer addresses in his nonfiction book about Chris McCandless, Into the Wild.  After graduating college, Chris leaves Virginia and heads west on a soul searching adventure.  Two years later, his emaciated body would be found by hunters in the Alaskan bush.  Krakauer retraces Chris’s steps from North Dakota and Nevada to California and New Mexico.  He interviews many of the people Chris met along the way and through their stories we gain insight and compassion for this enigmatic young man.

What’s interesting about this novel is the way Krakauer reveals his story.  We learn of Chris’s fate in the onset of the book.  The remainder of the story is a jigsaw ensemble of events and motivations that help us understand his journey.  Chris was an ideologue who wanted to rid himself of material properties and subsist on his own.  We learn about his upbringing,  his family struggles, his academic and sporting accomplishments, as well as his stubbornness and determination.  To build a better understanding of Chris’s character, Krakauer also includes excerpts about others who shared his quest to survive alone in the wilderness.  One such excerpt is about Krakauer’s own time spent mountaineering in Alaska.

I highly recommend this book to teens and older readers.  It is a quick read that satisfies the spirit of adventure but also presents challenging moral questions.  I encourage you to learn more about Chris and his ill-fated journey by reading Into the Wild.