Customer Reviews

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

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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

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

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

Point Last Seen is a fantastic story of one woman's personal survival, growth and finding strength within herself. Hanna Nyala, after escaping a young and very violent, sadistic marriage, compounded by the loss of her children who were kidnapped by their father, goes into the desert to find some peace and refuge. She becomes a tracker at a national park, searching for lost hikers, children at peril, and in the process finds strength and comfort for herself. Nyala's calm, non self-pitying rendition of her story is powerfuly affecting, for this reader at least and likely many others. The story was recently made into one of the better made for tv movies starring Linda Hamilton. Nyala's quiet but powerful use of words, and her comparisons of the methods used in tracking as a metaphor for finding one's own path are uniquely expressed and inspiring. This is an unforgettable book.

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

My mom is starting to make me read more books. I don't mind, personally I love to read. When I frist started reading this book I thought she was a little whiny. But as I read on and on I started seeing she had alot of reasons to. I thought it was a very good book, and I congratulate the author for writing this book.

I read this book in one sitting, my heart in my throat, anxious to know if everything would turn out all right. The author has done a masterful job of constructing the narrative in such a way that you are constantly picking up her tracks, following them for a bit, losing them only to pick them up at a later date or place. Her prose is deeply moving without being overwrought. Some will be disappointed that there is not more here: there was clearly more story that could have been told. Yet in keeping with the central metaphor of the book, Nyala's story must be reconstructed by the reader based on the tracks she has left behind.

I ordered this book before it was published because I am a woman tracker too . . and her tracking interludes in the book are facinating to me . . but the rest of the book made me wonder if you can add domestic violence to any subject and get it published as that's such a trendy subject.. Also the book left many many questions. Was it fiction or autobiographical? It never says anywhere. She talks about studying tracking in Africa . . briefly, too briefly. For those of us who track it was like finding the subjects tracks lightly etched on the trail . . .just as the wind picks up. I hope she picks up her subject again from the dust particles and fills in the trail.

A wonderful story about a remarkable woman. I found this book deeply moving and inspiring. Highly recommend this book!

I'm not at all sure what drew me to this book - it's not my usual read, by any means.

But Hannah Nyala's `Point Last Seen' has a stark honesty that captured me from the first paragraph and kept me interested all the way to her frank - and real world - closing page. Though I was conflicted that the word "conclusion" did not apply, because the build up to an airbrushed Hollywood final chapter would have undermined the gritty realism that permeates her life and that of her children, yet such an ending would have represented a wonderful reward for a life lived so hard.

Nyala's writing style is sparse and poignant, allowing the harsh physicality of the Mojave Desert to mirror the emotional terrain she offers up so matter of factly. Battered, brutalised and initially broken, her story is heroic on a number of levels. Hers is the challenge of personal courage slowly nurtured from the sad failings of expectations repeatedly dashed. It resonates with the subtle complexity of a straightforward story told simply and clearly, and even if the ending isn't Hollywood, you'll probably wish that for her sake it should have been.