A few weeks later, McCandless showed up in Carthage and eagerly worked at a variety of physically challenging jobs at Westerberg’s grain elevator. McCandless lived in his large house with a rotating cast of Westerberg’s employees and friends. When Westerberg was jailed for pirating satellite television service, however, the work […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 3 – CarthageSummary and Analysis Chapter 2 – The Stampede Trail
The Anchorage couple is too upset by the note and the smell of decay to investigate further. They are soon joined, however, by three hunters riding all-terrain vehicles. Looking inside the bus, one of the men, an auto-body shop employee named Gordon Samel, discovers a dead body in a sleeping […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 2 – The Stampede TrailSummary and Analysis Chapter 1 – The Alaska Interior
McCandless plans on following the Stampede Trail, an often unmarked route in the wilderness north of Mount McKinley. Gallien tries to talk him out of this, but the young man is undeterred, claiming there isn’t anything that he can’t deal with on his own. On Tuesday, April 28, 1992, “Alex” […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 1 – The Alaska InteriorCharacter List
Charlie Old man who lives outside Bullhead City, Arizona, and suggests that McCandless live in an empty RV of which Charlie is a caretaker. Ronald Franz Eighty-year-old man who gives McCandless a ride from Salton City, California, to Grand Junction, Colorado. After McCandless’s death, Franz heeds the young man’s advice […]
Read more Character ListBook Summary
July 10, 1990: Abandons his car after it is damaged by a flash flood. Loads his belongings into his backpack and sets out on foot. July–August 1990: Hitchhikes to California’s Lake Tahoe, then hikes into the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Travels to the Cascade mountains, across the lava beds of […]
Read more Book Summary