Point Last Seen ~ by Hannah Nyala

Title, author, date of book, and genre?
Point Last Seen: A Woman Tracker's Story ~ by Hannah Nyala, 1997, memoir

What made you want to read this book? Did it live up to your expectations?
Having recently read and reviewed Place Last Seen, a novel by Charlotte McGuinn Freeman, I was immediately intrigued when I saw this in a used book store yesterday. (Notice that both are about PLS.) This one is not fiction, but nonfiction, a woman writing about her own life as a tracker. Was it as good as I expected? No, mostly because it is not as well constructed as Freeman's novel. Publishers Weekly said:

This is a book that would have benefited from a professional coauthor, but even so it expresses clearly enough the resourcefulness with which Nyala has rebuilt her life, a resourcefulness that may inspire hope in others, especially women who feel trapped in desperate situations.

What do you think motivated the author to share her life story?
Nyala was married to a viciously violent man (abuse is too tame a word), and I agree with PW that her story may inspire hope in other women who feel trapped.

Do you think the author is trying to elicit a certain response from the reader, such as sympathy?
Sure, she had recently escaped from her husband, who had abducted their children, and she realized she was still being "tracked" ... though I would say her husband stalked her and (when she had one or both of them) the children. So she began to teach herself all she could about tracking in the Mojave Desert, eventually joining a National Park Service search and rescue team. This book reinforced what I learned from Wendy, who chose the novel Place Last Seen for our Something About Me reading challenge, that we need to begin seeing what is right there in front of us:

Trapped by our concepts and languages and the utter predictability of our five senses, we often forget to wonder what we're missing as we hurry along toward goals we may not even have chosen. (p. 2)

No aspect of one existence goes untouched by any other, but we seldom realize just how tightly connected we are to everything else that exists alongside us. (p. 150)

What is the best part of this book?
I love to learn, and it was exciting to see Nyala gain the ability to see a "footprint in soft grass outside a bedroom window." For her it was a matter of survival. I was impressed that her tracking skills were helpful when she studied for her degree in anthropology ... because she was trained to observe carefully. She learned even from Ju/Wasi and !Kung Bushmen trackers, taking her two children along on that trip to Africa.

What was the most disturbing part of the book?
I was so frustrated with the legal system in this country:

Her daughter Ruthie asked, "Why do they let Daddy hurt us, Mom?" (p. 117)

And her second husband finally grasped the horror of the situation when Kevin, the abuser, appeared in court "to insist on a day's unsupervised visitation despite Jon and Ruthie's tearful pleas to the judge not to let their father take them -- when he heard that the judge had said he believed the children and me [Nyala] when we told him that Kevin had abused us, but that he also believed children needed to know their biological fathers, so he was ordering a day of unsupervised visitation (with strict orders not to leave the county and with pick-up and delivery of the children at the local sheriff's office)" (pp. 152-153).

So Kevin once again abducted the children and, too late, the judge also finally got the picture. Library Journal said:

This book belongs in nature collections because of its captivating descriptions of trackers and tracking, but it also belongs in social science and woman's collections because of Nyala's triumphs over such profound abuse. Highly recommended.

How would you rate this memoir?
Rated: 8/10, very good, for the hope it could inspire in abused women.

By the way, the author has a sense of humor. She was feeling overwhelmed by the noise and clamor of a city after the peacefulness of the desert and said, "Then, thankfully, I was rescued by a bookstore" (p. 79).