Without a Trace

From World War Two veteran to legendary American mountain man: The “mesmerizing tale . . . [of] a 20th century Kit Carson” (The Winchester Star).

Orphaned as a young child during the Great Depression, he was called John P. Glover. No one at the boys’ schools in which he grew up knew much about him. The boy himself hadn’t even a clue what the “P” stood for. Seventy years later he was known as the Sierra Phantom, a blissful, solitary modern frontiersman who’d finally found a place to call home in the wilds of the Sierra Nevada. Then, after decades of surviving off the land, the local legend who lived in the shadow of the small mountain town of Bishop, California, was tracked down by journalist Danielle Nadler.

Through their weekly conversations, the mountaineer shares his years of outdoor survival, his need to be free, and eventually the personal tragedies that drove him to a life in the wild—from his hardscrabble childhood to his service fighting the Japanese during the Second World War. With each new revelation behind his personal, spiritual, and emotional journey, the Sierra Phantom himself comes to discover the importance of human connections, and a renewed sense of purpose that could change his life yet again.