In April 1992 Chris Mc Candless, a young man from a well-to-do family, hitchhiked to Alaska & walked alone into the wilderness. He had given all his savings to charity, abandoned his car & possessions, burnt all the money in his wallet, & invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a hunter... Jon Krakauer, bestselling author of Into Thin Air, uses Mc Candless' restless progress around the wide spaces of North America to explore the call of the wild & the mentality of those who succumb to it. What emerges from this mesmerizing, heartbreaking story is a version of the wilderness that is hard & seductive; a place where one can quite possibly find one's self, but also opening the dark possibility that we might find our own nature strange & disturbing.