hunting the missing in the wild
Frankie Elkins looks for the missing. When the case has gone cold and the police have no leads, that’s when she’ll want to step in. She’s not a licensed investigator or law enforcement. She’s just a determined woman with an obsessive need to bring families closure after going through a horrible loss. And Frankie succeeds by getting into the community, asking questions, and listening for the answers. She has a way of breaking through people’s defenses and getting to the truth.
She’s on her way to find a young boy who’s gone missing when she finds herself in Wyoming. Timothy O’Day had gone missing during his bachelor party camping trip. He and his four friends had gone into the woods to hike and camp. The first night, they set up camp and started drinking. Overnight, one of them goes missing, and they split up to look for him. They found him in the woods, bloody and with no memory of what happened. They head toward safety. It’s not until the next morning, when they’ve gotten to safety and headed back to their camp that they realize Tim has disappeared.
It’s five years later, and the have assembled again to look for him. Tim’s father Marty, who had never stopped looking for him, is assembling another group to hike into the wilderness. His wife Patrice has cancer and won’t survive another year. This is Marty’s chance to bring his son home, so he can put Tim to rest next to where his wife will be buried. He’s promised Patrice. And he’s promised himself.
Frankie finds the group in the local diner, Marty and the local guide Nemeth. There is a woman and her yellow Lab. Tim’s four groomsmen from the original trip. And a large man with a beard that Frankie clocks as the Bigfoot hunter. She knows that it’s the Bigfoot hunters who are doing the real mapping of missing hikers, so it makes sense to bring one along on the search. Bob, known online as BFBob, recognizes Frankie almost immediately from the online forums that talk about missing persons. He vouches for her, but Marty doesn’t want another person on the team. Frankie, unwilling to give up, points out that one of Tim’s groomsmen, Josh, is clearly not up for the hike. As a recovering alcoholic, she sees the signs that he’s not okay.
Luciana, the dog handler, and Nemeth get Frankie geared up for the trip and give her some pointers on what to expect. She’s done woodland searches before, but no hikes like this. She’s not entirely sure of what she’ll come across on the trip. Bears? Mountain lions? Snakes? There are at least a dozen things that could kill her on this trip, including the humans she’s travelling with. But she’s determined to find the answers Marty needs, no matter what happens.
The hike turns out to be far more physically exhausting than anything Frankie has done before, but she is determined to keep up with the group. She asks lots of questions, learning more about the land, about hiking, about Tim, about what happened five years earlier. Frankie learns just how vulnerable she is in the wild. She makes friends with those on this search with her. But what she finds in those woods is something she never expected, and she will never be the same again. That is, if she’s able to make it out of the woods.
One Step Too Far is the second in Lisa Gardner’s Frankie Elkins series, and as more of Frankie’s story comes out, the more respect she earns. She is not one to take the easy way out, and this story is a thrilling, chilling, twisty example of just how far she’ll push herself to find the truth about the missing. This story is fascinating and terrifying in equal amounts, and I could not stop listening to it.
I got pulled into the audio of this story from the start, with narrator Hillary Huber taking on the voice of Frankie with élan and emotion. Frankie tells her story with honesty and vulnerability, and Huber infuses her reading with intelligence and determination. This is an amazing way to listen to this story, even when everything starts to fall apart for the search party and the danger is all too real.
I fell in love with Frankie when I read Gardner’s first book about her, and I was thrilled to find out that there were more. I think there are a lot of us Frankiephiles, and we love to see her pushed to her limits, like she was here. One Step Too Far is a heck of a ride, and while I certainly wouldn’t go into the woods with her, I will always read about her journeys and cheer her on from my sofa.
