Raechel's Reviews > The Cold Vanish: Seeking the Missing in North America's Wildlands

This was a generous "okay."

This book mainly focuses on the Jacob Gray case, a young man who vanished and left behind his bike. The author spends a lot of time searching for Jacob with his father, but we get occasional chapters of other vanishing cases, some solved and some not.

I picked this book up because I thought we would get a better look at the search-and-rescue process as well as detailed, factual accounts of how those searches go. Instead, we hop from case to case about vanished men, abducted women, and Jacob Gray.. and get a LOT of Bigfoot theories.

I hated the Bigfoot stuff. It is so disrespectful to talk about a woman being kidnapped, held hostage and assaulted for days by a serial killer before her body is discarded off a bridge.. then listen to the author claim that "well no one's ever proved Bigfoot DOESN'T exist." (Yeah, because you prove things EXIST when you MAKE THE CLAIM.)

There's no real look at SAR protocol other than the author talking about his own eyewitness accounts or regurgitating David Paulidies conspiracy theories. Really, disrespectful is the rest descriptor of this book.

I kept reading just to make this review and warn people about this book. When I described the MULTIPLE Bigfoot theories peppered through it, my boyfriend thought this was fiction. Bigfoot, portals to another dimension, and alien abduction are all half-seriously mentioned throughout the book. Don't read this if you're looking for something serious and informative.