When DJ Lee's friend and mentor disappears in the vast Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness of Idaho and Montana, she travels there to seek answers. The disappearance unexpectedly brings to an end Lee's fifteen-year quest to uncover the buried history of her grandparents in this remote wilderness. Lee doesn't find all the answers but comes away with a penetrating memoir that weaves the present-day narrative with past trips, family secrets, and wilderness history. Through wild animal encounters, near-fatal river crossings, bush plane flights in dense fog, raging forest fires, and strange characters who have come to the wilderness to seek or hide, she learns how to survive.