Full disclosure: I sort of know the author as she has volunteered with my beautiful wife in a local entrepreneur’s group (well, she was there before my wife, so perhaps I should say “My beautiful wife volunteered with this author.”) So when I saw that she, the author, was having a book signing downtown (not yet at ABC Books) on First Friday Art Walk night, I dragged my wife and my youngest downtown to get a copy.
Ms. Greiner is a photographer and avid hiker, and she often hikes alone. The book talks about those hikes, hikers who get lost, tells the story of how she got lost trying to get a photo of a sunset but made it to camp and to her husband only a little late, and then culminates in the story of how she got lost on a hike and spent a night in the forest whilst thunderstorms raged and the temperature dropped to near-freezing before hiking some number of miles in the morning to rescue (and then to a series of events that would not be believed in fiction).
The book is relatively short (117 pages), leavened with the author’s photographs. It’s professionally laid out (which as you know, gentle reader, I can appreciate, or at least do). Not only that, but the book builds the story–I confess, I knew what the book was about when I started it–starting with some anecdotes about taking photographs, sometimes in dangerous circumstances (it starts out with photographing alligators on the bayou in Louisiana) and then a little about getting lost, building to almost dying at the end and then dénouement which is its own story.
Okay, so I liked the book. How much? I read it in a single night, and then we tracked her down at Artsfest in Springfield the next day to buy another book as a gift. And if she ever makes her way to ABC Books for a book signing, I’ll have to think of to whom I will give that copy as a gift. But hopefully I will have some time. Maybe Mrs. Shepherd. Who likes to hike? Who likes photography?
Oh, yeah, I would be remiss if I did not mention that she credits God for her survival, and the book is also a testament to her faith.
