Trail of the Lost

Trail of the Lost

by Andrea Lankford

As a park ranger with the National Park Service’s law enforcement team, Andrea Lankford led search and rescue missions in some of the most beautiful (and dangerous) landscapes across America—from Yosemite to the Grand Canyon. But though she had the support of the agency, Andrea grew frustrated with the service’s bureaucratic idiosyncrasies, and she left the force after twelve years. Two decades later, however, she stumbled across a mystery that pulled her right back in: three young men vanished from the Pacific Crest Trail, the 2,650-mile trek made famous by Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, and no one had been able to find them

Andrea’s growing concern soon led her to a wild environment unlike any she had ever encountered: missing person Facebook groups. Andrea launched an investigation and joined forces with an eclectic team of amateurs who were determined to solve the cases by land and by screen: a mother of the missing, a retired pharmacy manger, and a mapmaker who monitored terrorist activity for the government. Together they tracked the activities of kidnappers and murderers, investigated a cult, rescued a psychic in peril, crossed paths with and unconventional scientist, and reunited an international fugitive with his family. Searching for the missing became a brutal psychological and physical test with the highest stakes, but, eventually, their hardships began to bear unexpected fruits—those that led them to places and people they never saw coming.

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