Finding Everett Ruess: The Life and Unsolved Disappearance of a Legendary Wilderness Explorer Hardcover - 2011

Media reviews

“Finding Everett Ruess is easily one of [Roberts’] best….thoughtful and passionate….a compelling portrait of the Ruess myth.” -Outside Magazine

“Anyone intrigued by the Ruess phenomenon will be enthralled with Roberts’ review of the young man’s biography, the stature of his artistic achievements and unrealized potential, and efforts to find and eventually memorialize him…. This is sure to appeal to fans of wilderness wanderers.” -Booklist

"Absorbing...A [well researched], readable look at a complex personality in wilderness exploration." -Kirkus Reviews 

"Everett Lives! If not in a desert canyon, then at least among the pages where David Roberts brings the young man's life and legend all together: his writings and art, his kinship with nature, his love for adventure and beauty, and the yet-evolving mystery of his disappearance. Count me one among many inspired by a young adventurer who lived in beauty and left us too soon. May we never stop wandering."
-Aron Ralston, author of Between a Rock and a Hard Place and subject of the film 127 Hours 

 "Roberts deftly..captures the complexity of his subject."
-Publishers Weekly

“I have not tired of the wilderness; rather I enjoy its beauty and the vagrant life I lead, more keenly all the time. I prefer the saddle to the street car and the star sprinkled sky to a roof, the obscure and difficult trail, leading into the unknown, to any paved highway, and the deep peace of the wild to the discontent bred by cities. . . .
    
"Say that I starved; that I was lost and weary;
 That I was burned and blinded by the desert sun;
 Footsore, thirsty, sick with strange diseases;
 Lonely and wet and cold . . . but that I kept my dream!"
-Everett Ruess