A Real Page Turner
I have read this book several times. The first time was before I ever set foot in California. I drove along the east side of the Sierra Nevada in 1989, and I remembered the book, and I re-read it at least twice. It's hard to put down. The author carries you out of your comfortable easy chair and into a forbidding and deadly wildness of unimaginable danger. How she ever endured and lived to write about the experience is a wonder beyond anyone's imagination.
I have read others of a similar genre; hers is a notch or two above them in terms of "can't wait to turn the next page" quality.
I could not fully appreciate the terrain until I saw it, but with Google Earth, anyone with a computer can see exactly what the east side of the Sierra looks like. It's dramatic.