Trail Of Feathers: Searching For Philip True | Robert Rivard

Trail Of Feathers: Searching For Philip True | Robert Rivard | Justice May Be Blind...

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Trail Of Feathers:...

	Trail Of Feathers: Searching For Philip True Robert Rivard PublicAffairs, 2005 - 417 pages average customer review:based on 11 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

In December 1998, San Antonio Express-News reporter Philip True vanished during a solo backcountry trek in western Mexico, home of the reclusive Huichol Indians and the Chapalagana, the Twisted Serpent Canyon, a 150-mile long gash that twists and plunges through the heart of the Sierra Madre. Five days later his editor, Robert Rivard, was part of a small search party that, nearly miraculously, tracked a trail of feathers that had leaked from True's sleeping bag to find his body.

Trail of Feathers is the story of the search for True and of the quest to bring his killers to justice. It is also the story of another perplexing mystery: Why had True taken such a dangerous trip, into such a raw, uncivilized wilderness, alone and without sufficient safety preparations, in the first place? After an unhappy and unsettled youth, True was at the age of fifty finally settling down to a career and a wife he loved. His first child was about to be born. What was he running from, or to?

Rivard's search for answers to these questions leads him deep into the Sierra Madre Occidental, one of Mexico's last true wildernesses, and deep into the secrets of Philip True's past. It also leads him into his own past, and an acknowledgment of the ways in which his life and True's mirrored each other. Suspenseful, atmospheric, and moving, Trail of Feathers is more than a true crime tale; it's a classic tragedy about how the past reverberates destructively into the present ? for individuals, for cultures, for nations.

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Well-Written, Well-Researched Literature

Trail of Feathers, by Robert Rivard, ranks up there with the best of so-called true crime literature - Capote's "In Cold Blood" and Mailer's "The Executioner's Song" come to mind. This book is really about searching for the essence of the man that was Philip True and will be an invaluable legacy for his son.

I note most of the reviews have been written by Texans. I hope this book reaches a far wider national and international audience because the themes it touches upon are universal. Other reviewers have given a synopsis of the story - I will just say this book should be read by everyone interested in the conflicts between indigenous people and modernity and for those readers that just want to enjoy a really good read.

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Justice May Be Blind...

...but she knows where you live. And if it's in another country, you better weigh your side of her scale with the most pesos. This is illustrated vividly south of the border, where much of Robert Rivard's new book, Trail of Feathers, takes place. In it, he recounts his physically and emotionally grueling foray into the remote canyons of Mexico in search of his vanished colleague, Philip True. True was a San Antonio Express-News correspondent who made the controversial decision to attempt a 10-day, solo foot trek through territory that would deter all but the most Spartan of adventurers.

True had always been a model of self-sufficiency and stoicism throughout his rough life; paradoxically, he often relied, perhaps naively, on the inherent kindness of his fellow man to survive, and planned to camp with the primitive Huichol Indians who had inhabited the land for hundreds of years. His impetuous journey didn't exactly surprise his wife, who knew better than anyone of her husband's affinity for nature and the solace he took in hiking. But she secretly hoped that this would be his last dangerous hurrah into the wilderness before settling down to his new family.

When word reached Rivard that True's return date had come and gone, the story evolved into a reporter-as-detective narrative. He saw it as his editorial duty to locate the whereabouts of his missing employee. Both men are spurred on by a journalist's idealism and relentless thirst for knowledge, and as we learn more about True's life and family secrets through Rivard's meticulous research, intriguing parallels emerge and the fate of the two becomes inextricably intertwined.

The obstacles that spring up at every switchback on the trail of Rivard's surrealistic odyssey are formidable. Mysterious Huichols, brazenly corrupt authorities; crossing the border becomes akin to crossing through Alice's looking glass, which like a funhouse mirror, reflects back America's own democratic and judicial shortcomings and magnifies them into grotesque distortions. Retracing True's footprints, we feel as though we're stepping back in time, our gringo presence and notions of justice appearing increasingly anachronistic the less civilized the lands become.

We learn about True's motivations through his enigmatic journal entries, and while we gain a deeper understanding of the complex man, the great insight as to why he left behind his family in their time of need remains frustratingly elusive. The "terrible beauty," as Yeats might say, of the harsh terrain that they have to contend with becomes almost like a character in the book as well, complicit in True's death. Rivard's search party eventually locates True's body in a shallow grave outside a Huichol camp, and the Mexican investigation begins. But CSI, this ain't. If you think the wheels of justice turn slowly in America, wait until you see them on a Mexican jalopy.

Two suspects, an obsequious Huichol and his domineering friend, who reminded me of the killers in that most famous of true-crime novels by Capote, are soon apprehended, and deliver unrepentant confessions. Yet each time the case against them appears crystal clear, the waters are promptly muddied darker than the Rio Grande. Rumors of coercion surface, and soon international politics, bureaucratic red tape and nationalistic media are all further postponing justice.

Mexicans see it as hypocritical that one lost American would receive such attention when locals go missing all the time without a trace, much less a trial. Ever-resentful of foreign intervention into their affairs, many of them view the writer's mission as just one Texan "trying to re-fight the battle of the Alamo," as Rivard memorably puts it.

The more we begin to understand the psychology of the people that killed True, the more we begin to understand why the Mexican judicial system resists upsetting its stultifying lack of inertia. Miraculously, due to Rivard's perseverance, he and several other key players manage to not only achieve closure for True's widow, but also to throw some much-needed light on the withering judicial wasteland lying in the shadow of our own "Tree of Liberty," and write a riveting story in the process.

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Trail of feathers

a riveting account of a troubled man looking for himself. The story behind the story is the author's and also boss, never ending search to find out who killed him. Rivard is truly the hero in this story.

Scary Because The Killers Are Out There

In a way, Philip True had the dream life of a reporter, in which after one's death a top editor leaves his comfy chair and tries to find the path of righteousness you led him to. It was a trail of feathers, from a leaky sleeping bag, that led Robert Rivard to the grisliest of all discoveries: the puffy, bloated and decomposing body of the man whose boss he had been and who had once deceived him, never even telling him by word or sign that he was headed once more for the Sierra Madre, in Western Mexico. But by this time we have found out some heartbreaking facts about poor old True, the man who had survived everything, from child abuse to being a hippie, and who had finally found happiness with a Mexican bride, Martha, who was pregnant when he went larking for one last investigative jaunt, and whose son, little Teo, was born way after True had already been killed by a pair of vengeful Mexican First Nations people of the Huilchol tribe.

It's a tale that, to my knowledge has never been told before. How often do you listen to a man tell you what it's like to dig up the corpse of an employee--without tools, so that we become disgustedly fascinated with the mechanics of using one's bare hands as tools, while little by little corruption meets the air. Not only bodily corruption but a dismal disjunct between our two countries, the USA and Vicente Fox's Mexico.

Just as shocking is the list of True's own secrets, for he confided only to one woman and to a therapist that he had been the victim of a rapacious mother who had fondled him sexually as a boy, and a father who had a secret BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN cigar box stuffed with Polaroid photos of himself enjoying sex with other men, and who was caught in bed with his own seven year old daughter, poor thing. No wonder Philip never really grew up, or so it seems.

It's hard to believe that his killers are still out there, in the cavern of the Sierra Madre the Indians call the "Twisted Serpent." Rivard writes like lightning, and with furious vengeance he has targeted his prey with nooses of a thousand paragraphs long. This book should be required reading for all those who believe in investigative journalism. Sometimes you have to ask yourself, is it all worth it? The answer, as far as I can tell, is still blowing in the wind. A painful answer but one we should have tattooed to our arms like sailors their anchors and roses.

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Get to the Point Already

In December, 1998, San Antonio Express-News reporter Philip True vanished during a solo backcountry trek in western Mexico, home of the reclusive Huichol Indians and the Chapalagana, the Twisted Serpent Canyon, a 150-mile long gash that twists and plunges through the heart of the Sierra Madre. Five days later his editor, Robert Rivard, was part of a small search party that, tracked a trail of feathers that had leaked from True's sleeping bag to find his hidden grave." "Trail of Feathers is the story of the search for True and of the quest to find his killers and bring them to justice. It is also the story of: Why had True taken such a dangerous trip, into such a raw, uncivilized wilderness, alone and without sufficient safety preparations, in the first place? I'm more of a "get to the meat of the story kind of reader". Too much background information in the beginning and too much droaning on about how corrupt the Mexican court system is.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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