The "gritty and riveting" story of naturalist Craig Childs's epic journey through the desert canyons of the American Southwest ( The  Oregonian ).  Are you prepared for a perilous journey into the wild? This taut, intensely dramatic narrative immerses us in a labyrinth of canyons in the American Southwest where virtually nothing is alive — barely any vegetation, few signs of wildlife, and scant traces of any human precursors — and where we pay witness as two men confront not just immutable forces of nature but the limits of their own sanity. As a chronicle of adventure, as an emotionally charged human drama, as a confessional memoir,  The Way Out is a transcendent book, a work destined to earn a lasting place in the literature of extremes.