Point Last Seen: A Woman Tracker's Story of Domestic Violence and Personal Triumph [Paperback]

Hanna Nyala (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1998

After seven years of living as a battered wife, Hannah Nyala took her two children and ran. She eventually found work with the National Park Service as a search-and-rescue tracker--but her flight, and the abuse, were to continue for many years. Three times her ex-husband abducted the children and repeatedly threatened their lives and hers. In this wrenching and beautifully written account of her flight for safety and her life, Nyala reveals the intricate art of tracking: the challenge of keeping one's eye on the ground while racing against time, and the need to comprehend every sign. Weaving riveting stories of her own tracking missions with the nightmarish events of her life as one pursued, Nyala takes us on her personal journey toward independence and self-reliance, and powerfully demonstrates the acute powers of observation that to this day help her and her children survive. Few have written so perceptively about the terrors of living with family violence and about the limited avenues of escape available to most of its victims.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Point Last Seen offers a harrowing account of what it means to be hunted and never feel quite safe. Hannah Nyala grew up in rural Mississippi, tracking animals through the woods to shoo them away from hunters' guns. Raised by increasingly religious parents, she jumped from their arms into a suffocating marriage with a man whose escalating violence rocked her life and threatened their children. Her escape from him is temporary and tainted--he repeatedly abducts the children--but allows her to polish nascent skills as a tracker on rescue teams in the national parks. Her lucid, absorbing tracking stories anchor the book. Sown between or within them are frustratingly fragmented sketches of children and family and continuing threats from her ex-husband. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In this extraordinary book, Nyala leads the reader down two interwoven trails. On one trail, she explains in exquisite prose the skills required to be a tracker, locating those lost in the wilderness. Her two main stories of real-life tracking rescues grab the reader like the best compelling fiction. The second trail in her book is rather disquieting to follow. Here she describes her life as a battered wife and then mother. The accounts of her attempts to get legal assistance, to find her kidnapped children, and to avoid physical attacks from her husband and his hired thugs are quite unsettling to read. 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. [BOMC and Quality Paperback selections.]?Nancy Moeckel, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, Ohi.
-?Nancy Moeckel, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, Ohio
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (June 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140274634
• ISBN-13: 978-0140274639
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 4.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,023,176 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars fascinating autobiography, October 14, 2002

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Point Last Seen (Paperback)

POINT LAST SEEN is a fascinating autobiography not because it provides an insightful look at a female tracker rising above an abusive relationship, but because the nonfiction book lacks the polished skills of a professional co-author sanitizing any feelings out of the account. Instead this time the reader obtains the heart-felt inner soul of an individual seeking to better herself and her children through a skill learned from her grandmother that brings the author in harmony with herself, her family (except the ex) and nature. Hannah Nyala describes the duality of her life. Her anecdotes of locating individuals lost in the wilds are incredible, as these stories read more like strong fiction similar in a sense to her wonderful novel, LEAVE NO TRACE. She also describes her personal life starting as a Mississippi dropout to becoming a teenage battered spouse with two children to her escape to freedom and finally to tracking her abducted children when her husband and his goons kidnap them. Though lacking a professional sheen, biography fans will want to track down this strong account of a woman survivor.

Harriet Klausner

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A COMPELLING ACCOUNT OF A FAMILY'S COURAGE, May 22, 2004

By 

Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Point Last Seen (Paperback)

Hunted or hunter? Hannah Nyala has been both as she relates in her sometimes chilling frequently hopeful autobiography.

"Nothing can adequately prepare a human being for becoming another's prey," she writes. Yet for 19 years Nyala has been the quarry in a twisted game of cat and mouse.

She has also been the hunter, saving lives as part of a National Park Service search-and-rescue team.

Little in a bucolic childhood spent in southern Mississippi prepared her to contend with violence. The simple evangelistic Christianity embraced by her family taught her meekness, obedience, to turn the other cheek - even when it will be beaten bloody.

Kevin seemed quiet and sensitive when they met at a religious camp meeting. They married several weeks shy of her high school graduation. She had entered purgatory.

He beat her. Even when her waist was thick with child. Why? Because there were not exactly six ice cubes in his glass of tea. The cycle of bludgeoning accelerated, later laced with threats to kill their children, Jon and Ruthie, before dismembering her body.

If hand towels were perfectly folded but the space between them was incorrect, Kevin might choke her until she lost
consciousness.

"So after leaving him," Nyala writes, "no matter where my children and I lived, we deliberately hung our towels sloppily - not out of proposed rebellion, but as a marker: If we ever came in and found two hand towels folded precisely in thirds and hung on the towel bar with exactly one inch of space between them, it meant that he had been in the house. And might still be there."

Knowing that Kevin is pursuing them, Nyala and her family live in terror. Her worst fear is realized when Kevin kidnaps their children. Numb with grief she can only put one foot in front of the other, turning to the mountains for spiritual solace and survival.

The slow solitary process of studying footprints, tracking was her salvation. She learns to read broken twigs, bent grass, pebbles pressed into the earth, as well as to discern "The almost imperceptible trail a scorpion leaves behind."

Eventually she met Frank, a park ranger who became her second husband. They move to Joshua Tree National Park in southern California's Mojave Desert.

In graceful prose the author describes nature's world, the lush unexpectedness of desert flowers, animals scurrying to shade between rocks. She learns patience in the desert, and that "Tracking means learning to walk alongside, caring enough to reach out to other people."

After being largely responsible for finding a lost child and the subject of attendant publicity, Nyala finds that her team mates regard her as competitor rather than comrade. Uncomfortable in this situation, she decides to pursue a college degree in anthropology.

Being reunited with her children should provide the anticipated happy ending. But Nyala's life isn't written by the Brothers Grimm.

Her marriage to Frank ends in an amicable divorce. While she is at last awarded custody of her children, Kevin is allowed to post bail. Her home is broken into sixteen times. She and the children find towels precisely folded in thirds hanging on the towel bar. Today Kevin is a free man.

"Tracking marks my continued search for a safe place, while violence marks my repeated encounters with fear," she tells us. "Neither has yet canceled the other out."

Nonetheless, Nyala's story is ultimately one of empowerment, growing strength, and survival. Point Last Seen is the compelling account of a family's courage, which speaks to all who love and seek to protect each other.

- Gail Cooke

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Following Footprints can lead to a philosophy of life., July 29, 2000

By 

Allan M. Gathercoal "fdoamerica" (Norcross, GA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Point Last Seen: A Woman Tracker's Story of Domestic Violence and Personal Triumph (Paperback)

Female trackers are rarer than female hunters and Hannah Nyala is a master female tracker. Her book reveals the painful side of her life as she takes us down the battered trail of "a woman who stayed with a husband that beat her". And she opens up the tasks and thinking of a professional tracker. She shows how the act of following footprints on the ground leeds to a philosophy of life. For example these tracker truths are worth pondering:

1) As we hurry towards our goals in life we miss the subtleties of life itself.

2) Details mater enormously as you track...evidence of life, of movement, is what a tracker must find first.... Pattern are crucial.

3) Retracing steps requires getting alarmingly close to what is most unknown in ourselves

4) It is the little things, the tiny decision or non-decisions, that contribute most to losing one's way.

5) Part of the process of getting lost is losing sight of your reference point without noticing that it has disappeared.

Point last seen ...for a tracker is vitally important, getting to that location before all signs of the lost are destroyed is the trackers first priority. This is an enterating and engaging book. Recommended