By the 13th century, however, the Anasazi were gone from Chaco. Vanished. What was it--drought? pestilence? war? forced migration? mass murder or suicide? Craig Childs draws on scholarly research and a lifetime of adventure and exploration in the American Southwest to pursue the mystery of their disappearance. Considering many possibilities, he points the way to a new understanding of how a vibrant civilization collapsed.

Equally gripping as their adventure in the wild is the parallel story, told in flashback, of what propelled the two men into these extreme circumstances. In scenes that crackle with tension and suspense--recollections of barroom brawls, high-speed car chases, and reckless feats of risk taking--we discover the surprising legacy of violence that each man is escaping.

"I did not think of my father and his ashes as a traveler, ceaselessly flowing from one confluence to the next. Instead, I thought of him as a process. A story being told. I thought of him as a pool of unknown trout and the busted trunk of an alder half sticking up through the water. I thought of him as a raw, deep canyon heaped with boulders and mazes of creek passages -- the canyon he had once promised me. I thought of him as the beginning and the end at once."

Childs' journey of discovery covers Alpine to the Little Blue River; up Mount Graham, a perfectly contained sky island; around Sedona; through Canyon Country; along the lower Colorado River; and through the Sonoran Desert to the Sea of Cortes, with magnificent full-color photography by internationally recognized Arizona Highways photographers illustrating the range of his travels.