Into the Wild (2007)

Growing up, I always found myself getting lost in books and films about surviving the elements or daunting odds; The Call of the Wild, Empire of the Sun, Castaway, Robinson Crusoe, etc. So it was little surprise that Into the Wild resonated with me.

Emile Hirsch turns a brilliant performance as Christopher McCandless, a young man with a troubled family life who opts to disappear. The film is of course about his inevitable trek "into the wild" of Alaska-- but it focuses equally on the bonds McCandless forms with the people he meets and the friendships he forges on his journey.

What makes the film so work is the familiarity established with the friends McCandless makes and the bonds he develops. These bonds help to make him that much more human and while his motives may not be easy for all to understand his basic human nature is never in doubt.

In addition to Hirsch's brilliant performance as McCandless, Catherine Keener, Vince Vaughn, and Hal Holbrook also turned fantastic performances.

If Sean Penn continues to make films of this caliber hopefully he'll finally be convinced that he's much more skilled behind the camera than he is in front of it.

At the Mercy of the Sea by John Kretschmer

John Kretschmer, a professional sailor and writer has logged over 200,000 sailing miles including fifteen transatlantic and two transpacific passages. So to say that Kretschmer knows of what he writes would be a gross understatement.

Not being a professional or even amateur sailor myself I was appreciative of Kretschmer using "layman's terms" as much as possible without coming across as condescending as experts often do when they speak to those not as educated in their particular areas of expertise.

At the Mercy of the Sea is a true and rather personal tale of three sailors, including Kretschmer's close friend, Carl Wake, who found themselves caught in the stormy waters of Hurricane Lenny in 1999.

Perhaps what makes this tale so saddening was the unpredictability of Hurricane Lenny-- which defied conventional wisdom, predictions, and a long history of hurricanes and did its own things. The three sailors-- Carl Wake, Steve Rigby, and Guillaume Llobregat followed conventional wisdom and meteoroligical forecasts of the path of Hurricane Lenny in an effort to avert his destructive ways. And because this hurricane was loathe to be tied to the conventions of traditional hurricanes, traveling west to east instead of east to west or even east to northeast and curling up the Atlantic coast. In many ways Lenny was as much a character of this book as Wake, Rigby, and Llobregat were.

Kretschmer does an exceptional job of humanizing Wake, Rigby, and Llobregat. He spends most of his time focused on Wake as he knew Wake as a friend and thus felt more comfortable about accurately describing his friend's actions. Having extensively interviewed the friends and family of both Steve Rigby and Guillaume Llobregat Kretschmer did a respectable job of humanizing them as well, but despite his best efforts both Llobregat and Rigby came across more as supporting characters and Wake came across more as a "lead."

The book is rather pulse-pounding and does for sailing what The Perfect Storm did for fishermen. It's a thoroughly enjoyable read from start to finish and is as suspenseful as many of the dime-a-dozen pulp suspense novels that can be found in airports all over the nation-- what sets it apart-- unlike those pulp novels, this is real and Kretschmer's writing style allows the reader to taste the saltwater, feel the wind and the fatigue one might experience from solo sailing. And I hope, for my own sake, this book is the closest I ever get to sailing through a category four or five Hurricane.

The Australia Stories by Todd James Pierce

All families have their stories, their secrets. Todd James Pierce is no exception. The Australia Stories weaves the mystery of main character, Sam Browne's family with Pierce's very own family mystery. Throughout the book the line between Browne's fiction and Pierce's fact remains perpetually blurred which keeps the reader guessing.

The book is a multi-generational struggle with identity. His grandmother, who had once dreamed of returning to the England of her ancestors, gradually develops a love and sense of home for her own native Australia. After divorcing Browne's grandfather and becoming a guide on nature trails into the outback, Browne's grandmother walks into the desert never to be seen or heard from again.

Browne's mother, in a perpetual struggle to make some semblance of a connection with her mother; a mother who had always been a stranger to her; ends up following in her mother's footsteps, disappearing into the outback-- her decaying body found a few days later.

The book shifts from flashbacks to Browne's mother, his grandmother, to his own adolescence, and the failure of his first marriage as Browne tries to solve the mysteries of both his mother and grandmother and develop some sense of his own identity.

Part of the charm of this book is how deeply personal it feels. Throughout the book I felt as if Pierce were giving a glimpse of his own deep thoughts in the guise of Browne. I felt all of the characters easily relatable and felt myself connecting with them and understanding them on a level much deeper than I'm accustomed to.

This book would be an excellent addition to any middle or high school curriculum. We all go through that awkward phase where we're trying to figure out who we are. The Australia Stories is an excellent chronicle of that awkward search of personal discovery.