POINT LAST SEEN

In this beautifully rendered narrative, a woman reveals the art of tracking both in the wilderness and in autobiography. Nyala became a professional tracker almost by chance. Having grown up in rural southern Mississippi, she saw her own track veer tragically off course when, at age 17, she dropped out of high school shortly before graduation to marry an abusive man. She had two children with him and many near-encounters with death before she decided, seven years later, to escape. But eluding her vicious ex-husband turned out to be even more difficult than getting up the courage to leave. Nyala and her children suddenly found themselves being tracked, and they learned to read the signs of their pursuer in the footprints around their house, in the sliding door left slightly ajar, in the neatly folded hand towels in the bathroom. They moved often, but one day Nyala's children disappeared, abducted by their father. While trying to regain custody, Nyala married a park ranger and began learning to track in earnest. She talks here about the process: finding the track, following its turns, walking alongside the person or animal you're trying to find. It's fascinating to watch her mark a lost person's footprint from among hundreds and to see her determinedly trace the progress of wandering hikers as they stray farther and farther from their goal. She tells of two tracking experiences in detail, and of the slow process of becoming a true tracker. And Nyala also tells how, in mastering this skill, she found her own true course again: She was reunited with her children, went back to college, and studied tracking at ever deeper levels among the Bushmen in Africa. The gripping chronicle of a tracker finding herself as she looks for others. (Book-of-the-Month/Quality Paperback Book Club selection)