Book Description
WINNER OF THE 2003 BARBARA SAVAGE MILES FROM NOWHERE MEMORIAL AWARD
They're not sure which came first—falling in love with each other, or falling in love with the idea of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail (Mexico to the Canadian border). At the trailhead, they were warned that there would be tears, that each would have to find their own separate pace, and that at times the tent would seem awfully small for the two of them. They were told that their biggest obstacles to success would be…each other.
Their first surprise: freeze-dried meals do funny things to your GI tract. Their first fight: when Angela noticed that Duffy's long legs propel him along the trail faster than she can muster. But on they pressed— encountering snakes, bears, and fellow thru-hikers with trail names like Crazy Legs and Catch 23. They baked in the deserts of Southern California, gazed awestruck at the snowy, serrated peaks of the High Sierra, and attempted to hide from Northern Washington's seemingly incessant rain. 132 days later, they made it—blisters and all.
Customer Reviews:
Perfect!.......2007-09-03
There are many guidebooks on the trail itself. As someone planning this trip, the emotions from both the male and female perspective displayed in this book is also a very important aspect to be informed about also. I loved this book.
Great Read.......2007-08-29
I picked this book because it won the Barbara Savage memorial award, and it did not disappoint. This was a great account of adventure travel told from two points of view. The two perspectives made it humorous and insightful to hear about their adventures from two perspectives.
Great Twist.......2007-01-23
I like the chapters in the "he said, she said" point of view. I could really feel what each was going through. I thoroughly enjoyed the book.
Like a hike with good friends ..........2006-12-19
A Blistered Kind of Love is a terrific account of one couple as they trek the Pacific Crest Trail. The narrative alternates between authors Angela and Duffy Ballard, and that sets the book apart from other hiking memoirs. Seeing the hike from both perspectives invites the reader to share the experience with greater depth than most single-perspective narratives. It's almost as if we get to alternate sharing the trail with each author, hearing ones view of the trail tale before we hang back and join the other, listening to the same story with that author's particular way of looking at the adventure. Very quickly, the reader gets the sense of being on a hike with good friends. It helps that both writers do a terrific job of letting us see through their eyes. This book is strongly recommended for hikers, adventurers, and people interested in the way relationships develop in extreme situations.
A great book..........2006-05-09
For anyone with a sense of adventure and the urge to find it inside themselves. Both fun and inspirational - this is what good travel writing is all about - and it comes with an added twist. Duffy and Angela alternate writing chapters and their distinct styles (and perspectives) are what really make this book fresh and original.
Customer Reviews:
texas ranger lore.......2000-12-23
this is a very well written account of the authors life and career,as a member of this legendary organisation. it spans the period from about 1915-1935.during this time sterling rose from private to commanding the entire ranger service. the second part of the book offers full chapters on famous rangers.this book is required reading for any serious student of the texas rangers.
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The Fighting Marlows: Men Who Wouldn't Be Lynched (The Chisholm Trail, No 12)
Glenn Shirley
Manufacturer: Texas Christian University Press
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Life Of The Marlows: A True Story of Frontier Life of Early Days (A.C. Greene Series)
ASIN: 0875651305 |
Customer Reviews:
The Fighting Marlows.......2003-12-23
Shirley did a fantastic job in writing this book. In the Fighting Marlows he mentions Marshal George A. Knight Sr. and in reading the parts about Knight I recognized my husbands personality. He is the great grandson of George A. Knight Sr. He and other characters came alive for me and I really enjoyed the book.
Customer Reviews:
An Murder Mystery for Legal Scholars.......2000-03-30
This is an excellent book. It details the shooting of Rebecca Wight and Claudia Brenner, two lesbians hiking near the Appalachian Trail in Adams County, Pennsylvania. When Stephen Roy Carr, the "mountain man," saw them engaged in sexual activity, he shot at them with a .22 caliber rifle, killing Wight and injuring Brenner. What follows is a reconstruction of those events, Carr's subsequent capture, and the legal proceedings that followed.
Pohlman does an excellent job describing the events that occured that day in the woods in May 1988 - so well that it reads like a murder mystery. He is also equally strong in presenting the legal issues at hand. Did Carr shoot the women because of his anti-homosexual beliefs, or was he simply jealous? Could the victims and their families expect justice in a conservative small town such as Gettysburg, PA, where the jury could conceivably lessen Carr's crime because of their own anti-homosexual beliefs? The author makes good use of interviews with the prosecuting and defense attorneys in the case, as well as with the State Police officers associated with the investigation. One quickly realizes that what would appear to be an open-and-shut case - no one really belived Carr *didn't* shoot the women - can easily develop into a complcitaed web of legal issues. This happens as easily in small-town America as it does in O.J. Simpson's L.A.
I grew up in Adams County, and I was in junior high when this incident happened. I remembered hearing about it and even remember seeing it in the local news paper. For me, it was incredibly interesting to go back as an adult and read about these events. Just recently, I was able to use the author's description of the crime scene to retrace the steps Brenner and Wight took on that fateful day. That should give you some idea as to how detailed this book is.
Definitely worth reading!.......2000-03-15
Pohlman, a political science professor, has done an excellent job of shedding light on the inner workings of the criminal justice system and raising issues with which every thoughtful American should be concerned. I read this book in two sittings and found it fascinating. The story is dramatic, the writing tight and clear, and the treatment of the issues even-handed.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent coverage of an area needing attention.......2005-03-23
Got the book yesterday. It covers my favorite area on the planet (the Colorado Plateau) and as soon as I heard it was to be published, I decided to hike the section from South Rim to Zion National Park. With a lot of maps, trails could have been chosen and mistakes would have been made. This book has cut my planning down to less than half. The section getting from the Utah border to Highway 9 in Zion is worth the price alone. I can't wait to squeeze through "Fat Man's Misery".
This book should eliminate the planning mistakes. I'm sure I'll be able to make enough on my own. The mileages are essential information and well laid out in the different sections of the book. Important information such as where not to camp because of crossing private property and specific locations where there is danger of flash flooding, is vital to the component that needs to right up there with fun: safety.
The maps are excellent with the mileages shown on the maps corresponding with the mileages in the mileage portion of each section. Telling where water can be located and where to cache food for later pickup is equally important.
Most of the "Trail" is non-trailed. Excellent navigation skills are required for a successful completion of any portion of the Trail. I would have liked to see some GPS coordinates but most of those I wanted were available on the internet.
The book deserves additional credit for not sugar-coating the dangers that one will face on this Trail. The dangers cannot be overemphasized. It's not called wilderness for nothing.
Mitch and Joe want to bring attention to this wonderful area that seems to increasingly be under attack by those who look only at profit. To that end, I hope this book will be successful.
Customer Reviews:
Trial By Trail.......2002-12-19
This book was an interesting series of "challenges and stories" of what it's like in the "Johnny Molloy world" of experiences in the Smokie. It IS NOT a guide book, but rather a sharing of thoughts and ideas about the events on camping excursions as they relate to personal experience. Johnny "paints a picture" which is hard to not see, and brings you into the wilderness with him. I repeatedly found myself wanting to pick up the book and "share" in another experience with the writer. This is probably mostly about my wanting to be there, but not making that physical choice. Reading the book took me back to where I enjoy being. The physical struggling, sometimes touched on, was particularly interesting, as when we are up against our limits (a frequent theme in the stories), is when we learn the most about ourselves. It was an interesting "read"! Highly recommended.
Here's what it's really like in the backcountry.......2000-03-22
Johnny Molloy's Trial by Trail tells you what it's really like in the backcountry of the Smokies. If you're green, read Trial by Trail and find out what and what not to do. If you're experienced, read these exciting, fast-reading real life stories and remember when you were just as cold, lost, exhilarated or serene. This ain't no preachy guidebook, its a grainy portrait of life on the trail. After reading the first story, you'll be itching to pack up and hit the trail. Johnny Molloy knows what he's talking about, so read, learn, then go for it!
BEST BOOK ON THE NATURE OF CAMPING I'VE EVER READ.......1999-08-12
Anyone who buys this book expecting a guide to the Great Smoky Mountains will be dissapointed. However, if you want to read a great collection of stories, stories that make you feel as if your on the trail, this is the book for you. Johnny Molloy probably knows as much about the how-to part of camping as anyone, spending over a hundred nights a year in the backcountry. But again, this book isn't a how to guide. This book is about his experiences in the Smokies. And it's more than just a diary. It makes you feel as if your are on the trail with him. Anyone who loves to camp, for more than just purposes of taking a vacation, will enjoy this book.
Not a trail guidebook--title is misleading........1999-03-16
I ordered this book under the misconception that it was a guide to trails in the park. The title, I feel, is misleading. This book is actually a collection of essays about the author's experiences hiking the park.
Excellent account of the backcountry and beauty of the area........1998-01-31
This book shares the essence of the outdoor experience of the Great Smoky Mountains. I only wish it was longer and had more pictures. You can easily follow the authors' footsteps.. directions included.
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- Nice Alternative Viewpoint
- Digging for the Truth
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- Unbelievable!!
- A good book about a fascinating case
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A Trail of Corn
Keith Walker
Manufacturer: Golden Door Press
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Shallow Grave in Trinity County
ASIN: 1885793006 |
Customer Reviews:
Nice Alternative Viewpoint.......2006-10-19
This book offers the reader an alternative on the Abbott case from the defense aspect. I have read both books "A Shallow Grave In Trinity County" and "A Trail of Corn". I truly believe Abbott was the correct perpetrator. Burton Abbott basically had a very crappy life, especially after his lung surgery. He was sexually inadequate and had a juvenile record for sex offenses. He was a suspect in other sex related offenses and he had way too much time on his hands. He was a man who wanted to get caught, by his cavalier way of holding on to the victim, Miss Bryan's personal property as trophies of his "kill". He also frequented the same area as the victim and she caught his eye. A man full of adrenaline and testosterone in a psychosexual rush would have no problem ovecoming the victim and dragging her body up a hill despite his medical condition.
Sorry folks, to me he's as guilty as Lucifer. The fact that he was Protestant and requested a Catholic priest before his execution is telling. A Catholic priest is bound by the seal of confession and Abbott seemed so at peace afterward. Everyone suffered in this case, poor little Stephanie whose young life was so brutally extinguished, Abbott himself who died in the gas chamber and the families of all concerned. Stephanie Bryan's family especially suffered, as they internalized their grief refusing to talk about Stephanie's death and grieve together as a family. Her father Dr. Bryan suffered a fatal heart attack leaving a widow and four surviving children behind. Tragic from all aspects.
Digging for the Truth.......2006-02-25
Sure, I hypothesized a little and related what Burton Abbott was thinking. But what he thought wasn't entirely made up. He told his family how he felt, and they related it to me. I think the thoughts expressed in the book were close to the truth. It's still a true story.
Book too long? I purposely made it detailed and brought out every little point and possibility because I wanted to give the reader every opportunity to make up his or her mind as to whether Abbott was guilty or innocent. Any of those details could have changed the reader's judgement. Some, of course, were untrue or unrelated--but they might have been. It was not for me to judge or censor them.
The book was about a mystery--a controversial one--and it takes some intellectual thinking to separate out the details, especially at first. It's not for lazy skimming, but for digging for the true facts. The effort is worth it. The ingredients are there.
The experience did strike Abbott's mother deeply, and she did vacillate between grieving victim and fighting warrior. She had some good ideas, and some of the ideas she expressed proved invaluable.
It is true that sometimes defendants get a raw deal from prosecutors or judges. This is partly because the prosecution sometimes reaches biased conclusions, and believes the defendant is guilty and must be punished. Or it may be that the prosecutors are fighting a game to win, and refuse to acknowledge that there may be truth in the defendant's interest. Their eyes may be blinded to anything except what helps convict the prisoner, and they are good at it! Or, the evidence may be close and could go either way.
After 30 years of investigation, I came to the conclusion that Burton Abbott couldn't have done it. He wasn't there when the girl was kidnapped, but far north near Red Bluff on his way to the family cabin. Key testimony from very valuable, competent and sincere witnesses who did not know him, without an axe to grind, placed him there. But the district attorney and judge kept out this testimony, which would have been damaging to the prosecution case, and the jury never heard it.
A crown of thorns?.......2003-04-26
There's so much wrong with this book.
It's way too long - 756 pages of text. The author, Keith Walker, seems intent on sparing no detail, however insignificant, of Burton Abbott's trial in Alameda County for the 1955 slaying of Stephanie Bryant, whose corpse was found in an unmarked grave in Trinity County, and of the details surrounding the murder itself. Some of the more important details of the case get lost in the mish-mosh that Walker concocts, and I lost track of many of the names, dates, and places long before I finished the book.
756 pages is a more appropriate length for an encyclopedia, instead of a true-life tale of forensics/ courtroom drama. But Walker provides us with virtually no sources for any of the facts that he sets forth, and if he had, this presumably would have stretched the book out interminably further.
Without sources, we're forced to take the author's story at face value, and this is impossible in every instance because the author often "cheats" and sets forward as fact that which is clearly unknowable. The most glaring example of this is that he often does take us into the mind of the accused, Burton Abbott. The mind is that of an innocent man who is truly startled at all of the developments in the case against him, and because we see this early on in the book, a tone is set from there. Yet one need not bemoan the absence of a bibliography or source index to KNOW that the author could not possibly know what was in the mind of the accused.
The absence of source materials and the "mind-reading" device could only be acceptable if the author had intended to write a work of fiction based on the true facts of the Abbott/Bryant matter, but, as reflected in the Library of Congress/ISBN catalog reference, he appears to be passing this off as a "true crime" non-fiction book.
The book also dwells overly loud and long on the travails of Elsie Abbott, the aggrieved mother of the wrongly-accused. The slow tortuous route that she travels while awaiting her son's vindication is obviously part of this story, but to behold it as frequently as Walker imposes it on us is just too painful. Also, there is an air of unrealism about the way in which Elsie repeatedly shifts back and forth from maudlin grieving mother to whip-sharp Sherlockian detective with her own encyclopedic knowledge of the facts surrounding the case, and I suspect that Walker is using Elsie as a mouthpiece with which to describe his own impressions.
This raises the question of what exactly Walker's motivations are. I do not recognize Golden Door Press, the publisher, or any of Walker's other works described in the beginning, but I suspect that Walker's intention, at least in part, was to write an anti-death penalty book. There is an allusion to the anti-death penalty movement that was in existence in California in the 1950's. And while none of the "bleeding heart" arguments against the death penalty have ever convinced me, this book does highlight the only sensible argument against capital punishment that has ever been raised: the horrible possibility that it will cause a fatal and irreversible miscarriage of justice.
This book has caused me to revise my impression of another book on the same subject: "Shallow Grave in Trinity County" by Harry Farrell, which reads like a brief for the prosecution and made me wonder exactly why the jury deliberated for as long as it did. For all of its flaws, "A Trail of Corn" raises issues that remain inexplicably ignored or insufficiently addressed by "Shallow Grave", which was published later. These include the issue of whether Burton Abbott's slight build and sickly physical condition would have enabled him to overpower a resisting victim and ascend a steep hillside. Unless Stephanie was "walked" up the hillside while still alive, her murderer would have had to either carry or drag her corpse up the slope as well.
Some intriguing physical evidence that Stephanie was actually buried in Marin County before being unearthed and re-buried in Trinity (a notion pooh-poohed by Farrell and incompatible with the timetable justifying Burton`s guilt) is alluded to in this book. The notion that the criminal justice system is often "rigged" to favor the prosecution, that prosecutors themselves distort or disdain exculpatory evidence in order to score a "win" (and the political plums that accompany that win), and that judges hold prosecutors and defense attorneys to dual standards of conduct is less incredible to this reviewer, in his new capacity of public defender, than it once might have been.
Notwithstanding the book's length, the ending does somewhat repay reading. Elsie's (Walker's?) revelation of the candidate for alternative murder suspect is as plausible and startling in its denouement as the end of Perry Mason rerun.
Do the state of California and the county of Alameda have innocent blood on their hands? Hey, Abbott!
Unbelievable!!.......2002-05-28
A truly unbelievable book !!! This case has always fascinated me. Keith Walker does an amazing job of exploring the truths of this case, and leaves the reader amazed. Not to mention an inside look at our deplorabel justice system in the 1950's.
A good book about a fascinating case.......1999-03-18
The mid-fifties murder of 12-year-old Stephanie Bryant in Berkeley, California, fascinated me at the time -- I was also 12 and had been born in Berkeley. From newspapers of the time, I simply did not believe Burton Abbott could have committed the crime. This well-researched book finally provides some other possibilities and brings that early case back into the limelight. Very much worth a read.
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Old Yukon: Tales, trails, and trials
James Wickersham
Manufacturer: Washington Law Book Co
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ASIN: B000858IPQ |
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Ghost Tales from the Ghost Trail (Ghost Trial)
Cynthia Lee
Manufacturer: Sterlinghouse Publisher, Inc
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ASIN: 1585010235 |
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Murder on the Santa Fe Trail: An International Incident, 1843
Marc Simmons
Manufacturer: University of Texas Press
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ASIN: 087404202X |
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Dances With Marmots - A Pacific Crest Trail Adventure
Pacific Crest Trail Data Book: Mileages, landmarks, facilities, resupply data and essential trail information for the entire Pacific Crest Trail, from Mexico to Canada
Walking Down a Dream
The Pacific Crest Trail: A Hiker's Companion
We're in the Mountains, Not over the Hill: Tales and Tips from Seasoned Women Backpackers
