Customer Reviews

Trail Of Feathers: Searching for Philip True

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

With a few notable exceptions, true-crime literature has lately resembled what you get when you send a cub reporter to a lurid freak show.

It goes like this: A detached and usually mercenary author parachutes into the scene of the crime - often after an uncomfortably long interval - and pieces together the story from court transcripts, interviews (a bigger advance for an "exclusive" with the killer!) and a few grisly photos.

And the result - again, with notable exceptions - has generally been fodder for a mass market whose book-shopping starts with a surreptitious glance at the grisly photos printed in the middle of the paperback.

But then there are those exceptions. Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" was the seminal, postmodern true-crime tale. Vincent Bugliosi's "Helter Skelter" was the first great true crime-insider blockbuster. Joe McGinniss' "Fatal Vision" and Joseph Wambaugh's "The Onion Field" made relatively common crimes intensely personal. Each shares one thing: A "true" ending that isn't any ending at all, but a gateway to unanswered questions about humanity we might never answer satisfactorily.

Comes now Robert Rivard's "Trail of Feathers." Aptly labeled a "true crime/memoir," it's not just one story of crime and punishment, but also an exploration of deeply hidden personal secrets, bonds between men, the nature of contemporary journalism, cultural differences, the nature of justice and, ultimately, what one editor believed he owed a friend and reporter.

In December 1998, San-Antonio (Texas) Express-News reporter Philip True, 50, disappeared on a solitary hike into a dangerous Mexican wilderness. It was to be the Mexico City correspondent's last great adventure before the birth of his first child, but he also hoped it would provide material for a story he desperately wanted to write about Mexico's isolated Huichol Indians.

Author Rivard - then and now editor of the Express-News - joins a small search party that plunges deep into the alien region. Miraculously, he follows a trail of downy feathers from True's sleeping bag to a shallow grave where they find his decaying corpse. He'd been murdered.

Rivard's search doesn't stop in that rugged gorge, even as Mexican authorities arrest two Huichol Indian suspects in the killing, setting in motion a labyrinthine trial process. Delving deeply into True's past, Rivard finds both unnerving secrets and peculiar similarities between himself and True to bind them even closer in this tale of unsettled lives and unexpected death.

The perverse rhythms of Mexican justice add a final, disturbing twist to Rivard's story. Even now, almost seven years later, True's confessed killers remain free, safe within the invisible walls that surround the Sierra Madre Occidental and their reclusive culture.

Rivard, a former foreign correspondent himself, writes with clarity and sensitivity. His research is impeccable and voluminous, yet his storytelling isn't larded with footnotes and cumbersome arcana. He imbues common stories of human frailty and triumph with an engaging universality, and he brings often unfathomable issues of international relations and cultures in conflict to the human level.

But more importantly, he has submitted a far more intimate true-crime book than the market has seen in many years. He understood he was a part of this story and he accompanies the reader every step of the way, holding a hand when necessary.

Another failing of contemporary true-crime writing has been its tabloid-y texture, valuing blood splatters over social studies. "Trail of Feathers" deftly explores the effects of a single choice as they ripple outward. Philip True's ill-fated journey set in motion several other journeys, some of which have not yet ended.

That might be an uncomfortable conclusion for mass-market true-crime fans, but it's real. It's true.

from the HOUSTON CHRONICLE Sun, 23 Oct 2005

On the trail of Philip True / San Antonio editor writes
powerful and personal account of reporter's life and death in
Mexico

PHILIP True was a renegade reporter who came to his calling late in life, having packed his bags with experiences that ranged from an abusive childhood to hippie college days to stints as union organizer and wallpaper hanger.
By 1998 he found himself, at 50, finally grown up - even successful. As foreign correspondent for a major Texas newspaper, he had things others coveted: a wonderful loving wife, Martha, who was pregnant with their first child; a home in Mexico City's Las Lomas neighborhood filled with his travel photographs, a colorful and eclectic collection of artesania, and a cranky parrot named Fidel.
Despite his success True remained the driven adventurer he had always been (Tim Padgett, a colleague, called him the "Jack Kerouac of Mexican correspondents"). And those wandering ways, along with the demons of his childhood and his love for a story, took him once more on the road just after Thanksgiving in 1998 and, then, to his death.
True's murder in the Sierra Madre mountains, the search to find his body and the lengthy pursuit of his attackers are chronicled in ``Trail of Feathers,'' a bold and heartbreaking book by True's former editor, Robert Rivard. The title is taken from the day in December 1998 when Rivard, together with an elderly Huichol Indian, a search party of Mexican military officers, and True's best friend, followed goose down that had leaked from True's sleeping bag into the Chapalagana, the deep canyon named "The Twisted Serpent," where his body had been hastily buried under sand and gravel.
The book is many things at once: A wildlife adventure story and true-crime tale; an account of True's own off-beat life (aspects of which he had never shared even with his wife); Rivard's personal quest to find True and then to avenge his murder; and an analysis of how politics and the U.S. and Mexican governments both helped and hindered the investigation of the first modern-day homicide of a foreign correspondent on Mexican soil.
I knew Philip and Martha when I lived in Mexico City from 1996 to 1998. My own memories of Philip include eating an excellent home-cooked meal he made in his Las Lomas home and sitting up late talking about his crazy adventures: long bike rides on rough Mexican highways, cross-country hitchhiking in the United States and plenty of solo hikes into remote wilderness areas. I remember that Philip's voice took on a tone of heightened passion when he spoke about brief forays into the roadless and otherworldly territory of the Huichol Indians - the place he would die.
True disappeared in the roadless and rugged wilderness of the Sierra Madre that is formally part of the Mexican states of Jalisco and Nayarit but truly belongs to no one but the Huichol, indigenous people who have steadfastly kept to themselves and refused to assimilate into the great mestizo mix that makes up most of Mexico. He journeyed there with the idea of chronicling the Huichol culture, which he deeply admired, though his previous trips had been to a more modernized village on its fringes.
He had planned an ambitious 10-day trek through territorio Huichol, at the end of which he proposed to do an unprecedented and exclusive story with photos of the reclusive people for the San Antonio Express-News, where Rivard is editor.
But True, known to his friends as a rebel, had not obtained permission from his own editors to do the piece, instead taking off alone during vacation time. Nor had he sought advance permission from the myriad tribal chiefs who control the tiny villages and homesteads of Huichol country. For that supposed sin, some in Mexico were unsympathetic even to his wife, a native Mexican, who first asked her own government for help finding True, and then for help finding his killers.
But Martha True, who now lives in Brownsville with the son she had prematurely in 1999 after Philip's death, had an important ally in Rivard. Rivard was a high-ranking gringo editor who had hired True and had long years of experience in Mexico and Central America. Rivard's own troubled childhood and his career path from blue-collar worker to foreign correspondent mirrored True's.
Despite knowing nothing about True's plans and never having seen his proposal for the Huichol story, Rivard could not help blaming himself, at least in part, for the tragedy. A few days after True went missing, Rivard stepped in and pulled every string he could to find his lost reporter - even going to the Mexican president's office to appeal for help and then joining a reluctant general aboard an army search helicopter.
Rivard would return to Mexico again and again to dog the investigation of True's murder and the prosecution of his attackers. True's killers, both renegade Huichols, were arrested by Mexican authorities but released after a rural judge rejected the evidence against them, including their confessions. Though later convicted, the two men remain at large and are assumed to be somewhere in the same roadless wilderness where True died.
In the book Rivard explores various explanations the Huichols themselves offered for why they killed True. Among them: the violent attitude of the leader of the two outcasts; their hatred of outsiders; fear and anger about True's mission; drunkenness and a desire for the reporter's cash, camera and other possessions. In the end, readers are left to decipher the clues.
Even now, nearly seven years later, Rivard has refused to give up on finding the killers, recently flying into Huichol territory in yet another attempt to seek justice by offering a reward for tips leading to their capture. The book is his way of keeping True's memory alive and continuing his struggle.
The first part of Rivard's book is about True's life, why he took that fatal trek and how he disappeared and died. Then Rivard explores the equally twisted path of what happened to the murder case in the Mexican judicial system.
The details are heartbreaking not only because of True's tragic end but also because of Rivard's personal connection to his former reporter, which drives him to find True's body and even to witness his autopsy. The details gathered from these personal quests are all the more disturbing because they are shared by an author who was not an impartial observer but a deeply affected friend.
As someone who knew True and his wife, there were disturbing details I might have preferred not to know. Rivard shared secrets that True had long guarded, some even from his own wife. Drawing from his own notes, Rivard also takes readers in rich and horrifying detail to the site of True's grave and then to the autopsy table.
Rivard, who covered Central American wars for Newsweek magazine, frequently contributes prose powerful enough that after putting the book down at night I lay awake for hours reliving conversations I had had with True about the Huichol, about hiking and about solo on-the-road adventures and the dangers involved.
Rivard writes especially powerfully of his trip to find Philip's body and of the autopsy, during which he discovers first-hand the evidence and trauma of True's murder. The images Rivard planted in my mind of my friend's death, decay and dissection were not welcome but perhaps necessary. Philip did not die an easy death. Some passages made me shudder and feel again the pain that I and many other friends felt when the news went over the wires in 1998, first that True was missing and later that he had been found dead.
This book is enthralling. Both those who knew True and those who never met him will come to know him better through Rivard. They will also come to know the glaring weaknesses of the Mexican judicial system, where judges schmooze and privately celebrate with lawyers, records are closed, important evidence disappears and the guilty are often arrested or sprung for political reasons.
But to me, the true power of the book is very personal.
Like Martha True, I was pregnant when Philip died and felt some shadow of her intense grief. The child Martha was carrying when Philip disappeared is now 6, the age of my own son. No book can give this little boy back his father or restore to Martha the man she loved for all of his eccentricities.
But perhaps when that boy is old enough ``Trail of Feathers'' will allow Teo, as True's son is known, to know his father in some ways that might not otherwise have been possible.

This is a riveting book that's based on a true story but reads like a novel. I could not put it down. There's lots of action and intrigue in an exotic location, poignant and troublesome in places, but memorable characters combine with excellent storytelling to keep the reader moving along. The author has done extensive research and sticks close to the facts surrounding a reporter's murder in Mexico, thoughtfully interpreting all Spanish-language dialogue and explaining some aspects of culture in Mexico and big-city daily newspapering along the way.

Aficionados of 20th century literature may see a little bit of Hemingway and/or McMurtry in the opening chapters, in which a man-versus-nature plot seems to be taking shape. It's not long, however, before darker, more F. Scott Fitzgerald-like themes emerge, with troubling experiences in the formative years coming back to haunt the principals as the story repeatedly invokes the final line of The Great Gatsby: "boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

Astute observers of human behavior may wonder: Are the rocks that Philip True carries in his backpack in Mexico City while training for his ill-fated trek a metaphor for a lifelong burden that should be shed? Are the feathers that True totes into the mountains a symbol of vulnerability, as they are in the animal kingdom during molting, which is by definition a transition period? And what are we to make of True's choice of favorite flower, the iris, which according to Scoble and Field in "The Meaning of Flowers" was the name chosen by the Greeks for their messenger goddess, "who guided the soul to eternity after death"?

There may be numerous messages in "Trail of Feathers" but one important theme that emerges from this book seems to be that checking one's baggage is the best way to lighten the load on the journey through life.

On the surface, "Trail of Feathers" is the story of two quests: The quest to find San Antonio Express-News reporter Philip True, who goes missing in Mexico during a long hike through Huichol Indian country, and, tragically, the quest to find justice after he is found murdered. But it also is the story of True's quest to find himself after a troubled childhood, through his work as a reporter, his marriage and a series of sometimes risky adventures. Author Robert Rivard, who is editor of the Express-News and was one of those who found True's body, gives a detailed account of all three quests. The book, meticulously researched, is a fast, interesting read that gives a clear picture of the frustrations True's widow, friends and co-workers experienced as they struggled over the course of more than six years to bring the two men arrested in his murder to justice. Since this is real life, there is no pat ending here, but there is hope for the future. A book well worth reading.

Robert Rivard's first book reminds me of Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood," the first true-crime novel that launched a new "real life" literary genre. But while reminiscent of that breakthrough book, it rings even truer because Rivard actually lived through much of what he describes in his factual, well-written narrative. "Trail of Feathers" not only describes a shocking murder and a six-year struggle to bring the killers to justice, it exposes a disturbing undercurrent that runs through the Mexican culture and legal system, leaving the reader with a profound sense of horror and sadness -- tinged with hope.

For me, "Trail of Feathers" had a haunting quality from the very beginning. And upon reading the final page, I was still haunted by the compelling, unvarnished and disturbing images it details.

Rivard's research is meticulous. His prose is clear. And his ability to construct an authoritative story that combines strong journalistic skill with compassion for the human condition is impressive.

What happened to Phillip True -- and the resulting shockwaves that affected his colleagues and family -- is a modern American tragedy. But Rivard's book doesn't romanticize it. He simply "tells it like it was" and demonstrates how dedication to the truth, tenacity in the face of innumerable obstacles and passion for a good cause can yield profound and meaningful results.

Rivard's search for justice in the True murder became a strongly personal crusade that exposed a lot of unpleasant realities about U.S.-Mexico relations. It also caused intense and painful scrutiny of his own troubled past. But he seems to have maintained a remarkably objective approach to his work. He should be commended on tackling a difficult subject with grace, balance and restraint.

Rivard also gives credit where credit is due, thanking a multitude of people who helped him tell this important story. That generous quality is not seen too much these days.

Congratulations to Rivard and publishers Public Affairs on a fascinating, thought-provoking and hauntingly memorable book .

Trail of Feathers, by Robert Rivard, ranks up there with the best of so-called true crime literature - Capote's "In Cold Blood" and Mailer's "The Executioner's Song" come to mind. This book is really about searching for the essence of the man that was Philip True and will be an invaluable legacy for his son.

I note most of the reviews have been written by Texans. I hope this book reaches a far wider national and international audience because the themes it touches upon are universal. Other reviewers have given a synopsis of the story - I will just say this book should be read by everyone interested in the conflicts between indigenous people and modernity and for those readers that just want to enjoy a really good read.

...but she knows where you live. And if it's in another country, you better weigh your side of her scale with the most pesos. This is illustrated vividly south of the border, where much of Robert Rivard's new book, Trail of Feathers, takes place. In it, he recounts his physically and emotionally grueling foray into the remote canyons of Mexico in search of his vanished colleague, Philip True. True was a San Antonio Express-News correspondent who made the controversial decision to attempt a 10-day, solo foot trek through territory that would deter all but the most Spartan of adventurers.

True had always been a model of self-sufficiency and stoicism throughout his rough life; paradoxically, he often relied, perhaps naively, on the inherent kindness of his fellow man to survive, and planned to camp with the primitive Huichol Indians who had inhabited the land for hundreds of years. His impetuous journey didn't exactly surprise his wife, who knew better than anyone of her husband's affinity for nature and the solace he took in hiking. But she secretly hoped that this would be his last dangerous hurrah into the wilderness before settling down to his new family.

When word reached Rivard that True's return date had come and gone, the story evolved into a reporter-as-detective narrative. He saw it as his editorial duty to locate the whereabouts of his missing employee. Both men are spurred on by a journalist's idealism and relentless thirst for knowledge, and as we learn more about True's life and family secrets through Rivard's meticulous research, intriguing parallels emerge and the fate of the two becomes inextricably intertwined.

The obstacles that spring up at every switchback on the trail of Rivard's surrealistic odyssey are formidable. Mysterious Huichols, brazenly corrupt authorities; crossing the border becomes akin to crossing through Alice's looking glass, which like a funhouse mirror, reflects back America's own democratic and judicial shortcomings and magnifies them into grotesque distortions. Retracing True's footprints, we feel as though we're stepping back in time, our gringo presence and notions of justice appearing increasingly anachronistic the less civilized the lands become.

We learn about True's motivations through his enigmatic journal entries, and while we gain a deeper understanding of the complex man, the great insight as to why he left behind his family in their time of need remains frustratingly elusive. The "terrible beauty," as Yeats might say, of the harsh terrain that they have to contend with becomes almost like a character in the book as well, complicit in True's death. Rivard's search party eventually locates True's body in a shallow grave outside a Huichol camp, and the Mexican investigation begins. But CSI, this ain't. If you think the wheels of justice turn slowly in America, wait until you see them on a Mexican jalopy.

Two suspects, an obsequious Huichol and his domineering friend, who reminded me of the killers in that most famous of true-crime novels by Capote, are soon apprehended, and deliver unrepentant confessions. Yet each time the case against them appears crystal clear, the waters are promptly muddied darker than the Rio Grande. Rumors of coercion surface, and soon international politics, bureaucratic red tape and nationalistic media are all further postponing justice.

Mexicans see it as hypocritical that one lost American would receive such attention when locals go missing all the time without a trace, much less a trial. Ever-resentful of foreign intervention into their affairs, many of them view the writer's mission as just one Texan "trying to re-fight the battle of the Alamo," as Rivard memorably puts it.

The more we begin to understand the psychology of the people that killed True, the more we begin to understand why the Mexican judicial system resists upsetting its stultifying lack of inertia. Miraculously, due to Rivard's perseverance, he and several other key players manage to not only achieve closure for True's widow, but also to throw some much-needed light on the withering judicial wasteland lying in the shadow of our own "Tree of Liberty," and write a riveting story in the process.

In a way, Philip True had the dream life of a reporter, in which after one's death a top editor leaves his comfy chair and tries to find the path of righteousness you led him to. It was a trail of feathers, from a leaky sleeping bag, that led Robert Rivard to the grisliest of all discoveries: the puffy, bloated and decomposing body of the man whose boss he had been and who had once deceived him, never even telling him by word or sign that he was headed once more for the Sierra Madre, in Western Mexico. But by this time we have found out some heartbreaking facts about poor old True, the man who had survived everything, from child abuse to being a hippie, and who had finally found happiness with a Mexican bride, Martha, who was pregnant when he went larking for one last investigative jaunt, and whose son, little Teo, was born way after True had already been killed by a pair of vengeful Mexican First Nations people of the Huilchol tribe.

It's a tale that, to my knowledge has never been told before. How often do you listen to a man tell you what it's like to dig up the corpse of an employee--without tools, so that we become disgustedly fascinated with the mechanics of using one's bare hands as tools, while little by little corruption meets the air. Not only bodily corruption but a dismal disjunct between our two countries, the USA and Vicente Fox's Mexico.

Just as shocking is the list of True's own secrets, for he confided only to one woman and to a therapist that he had been the victim of a rapacious mother who had fondled him sexually as a boy, and a father who had a secret BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN cigar box stuffed with Polaroid photos of himself enjoying sex with other men, and who was caught in bed with his own seven year old daughter, poor thing. No wonder Philip never really grew up, or so it seems.

It's hard to believe that his killers are still out there, in the cavern of the Sierra Madre the Indians call the "Twisted Serpent." Rivard writes like lightning, and with furious vengeance he has targeted his prey with nooses of a thousand paragraphs long. This book should be required reading for all those who believe in investigative journalism. Sometimes you have to ask yourself, is it all worth it? The answer, as far as I can tell, is still blowing in the wind. A painful answer but one we should have tattooed to our arms like sailors their anchors and roses.

a riveting account of a troubled man looking for himself. The story behind the story is the author's and also boss, never ending search to find out who killed him. Rivard is truly the hero in this story.

In his Sunday columns for the San Antonio Express-News, editor Robert Rivard sometimes strikes a sour note, coming across as just a bit too self-satisfied, a bit too comfortable with speaking from the voice of unflappable command and authority. It's as if he's heard all the conservative complaints about the U.S. journalistic elite comprising a secular priesthood and decided, "You want a secular priest? You got it!"

So he's not exactly the person I was hoping would write a book about Philip True (whose name was once misspelled in Rivard's own paper as "Phillip True"), the Mexico City bureau chief who was killed seven years ago in the Mexican backcountry. A True intimate he was not. Nevertheless, he doesn't do a bad job. He's forthcoming about how the bilingual cadre of reporters lobbied in vain during 1998 for more Mexico coverage, as editor Fred Bonavita crafted a masterfully diplomatic performance appraisal for his unorthodox man in Mexico who felt marginalized by the home office.

Also, he was, as you'll find out if you read the book, extremely involved in the case from the beginning, accomplishing things that few editors manage to do once they're in the executive suite.

Rivard does admirable work at trying to get inside True the man - the outgoing fast-talker who nevertheless was tough to know deeply, the ladies' man who remained a bachelor until his early forties. In the end, I didn't feel like I'd known him (as some books can make you feel about their subject), but part of that stems from True's rugged individualism, and part of it comes from Rivard's admirable reportorial caution. To his credit, he doesn't pull a Woodward - i.e. he doesn't put direct quotes in True's mouth that he couldn't possibly have heard firsthand.

Left unanswered is whether the need to maintain Mexico's cooperation in this case resulted in the period's "pleaaase like us!!" coverage of Mexico on other issues - Exhibit A being reporter Dane Schiller's ring-kissing page one interview with the newly elected Vicente Fox.

On the other hand, Rivard did answer some questions that nobody was asking (or cared about), like the fact that he plays golf at a top-tier course or that he belongs to a 10-man clique of summer motorcycle excursionists.

The writing is competent and keeps you in suspense about the outcome right up until the end. However, towards the beginning of the book, he looks like he's going to try his hand at Code-Switching 101 (Sandra Cisneros, Prof.) with the chapter title "Caminando/Walking" and little phrases like "¿Quién es, y a donde (sic) va?" Fortunately, he soon abandons this awkward tic and plays it straight the rest of the way. It's better for all of us, as he has enough trouble with accent marks, including or excluding them on what appears to be a random basis.

Having to be a journalist while also lobbying the criminal justice system is a tough job, and Rivard again is dedicated and steadfast in balancing these dual roles. I wish he'd reflected on how hard he or any American news organization would have pushed authorities if True's murder had happened on American soil. My guess is that the push would have been just as determined, something Rivard never seemed to articulate during the guilt trips laid on him by some in the foreign press.

Unfortunately, it wouldn't be Rivard without a touch of shameless status-seeking, but he keeps these episodes brief. Let's just note that Rivard is amenable to making a macho statement like this: "...journalists with blue-collar backgrounds bring a perspective to our work that white-collar reporters who have never labored with their hands cannot match," while out of the other side of his mouth, he advocates policies that would make it even harder for Americans to hold on to the dwindling number of decent blue-collar jobs they have left. Call it the Rivard Catch-22. (I've done plenty of poorly paid late-night manual labor, in case anyone thinks I'm taking this personally.) And no, Rivard doesn't go on to say whether he checks female applicants' resumes for experience as a 1912 New York seamstress or as a modern-day forklift operator (like I implied earlier, I think his put-down was just a bit of alpha-male preening).

Anyway, hope that was enough inside baseball for you. Read it!