I had heard about Pat Tillman as most of us have.  It is one of those events like the Jessica Lynch capture and rescue that were construed as defining moments in the Iraq/Afghanistan war by the media.  The interesting part of this story is that Jon Krakauer writes about how Pat Tillman had gone out of his way to avoid media attention since leaving the NFL.  He did not do interviews and did not want to be made into anything special.

The biographical information that Jon Krakauer provides describes Pat as someone who was always driven and worked hard to meet his goals.  He was small when he was young and still went on to be a great football player in high school, college and later in the NFL, mostly due to hard work.  He challenged himself in many ways through doing marathons and triathalons in his off season.  It sounds as though he lived to experience life and did his best to learn and challenge himself.  After 9/11 Pat started having doubts about his career as a football player and felt that he needed to do something more and he joined the military.  His brother, Kevin, joined as well and served with him throughout his time.  This made the cover up of what truly happened even more remarkable, to me, since his brother was on scene when it happened and just out of view from what had happened.

From the way the book describes the circumstances surrounding Pat’s death, it was obvious pretty quickly that it had been due to friendly fire.  Their platoon had been split in two and one section ended up firing on Pat who had thought he was coming to their aid.  The videos of the battle went missing, the clothes that he was wearing were destroyed and those who were aware of what had happened, which was the majority of the platoon were ordered to keep it a secret as a deliberately misleading account was provided in order to garner better press.

Pat’s wife, Marie, worked with the author in providing information for this book but most of the rest of Pat’s family declined to take part.  His mother has also written a book Boots On the Ground Before Dawn which I am interested in reading.  The one thing that this book really brought to my attention is that the people who are serving in the military and their families are so greatly affected by the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, but for many of the rest of us we live our daily lives without really thinking about it.  The sacrifice is so great for those involved.

This is a nonfiction piece of work that is pieced together by the author interviewing many of the people that Christopher McCandless met on his travels as well as letters and journal entries.  No one can truly know what happened in the time that he spent in Alaska, but this was a fascinating book that offered a glimpse into the person who came from a privileged family and decided to give everything away and disappear to live by his own means and travel to Alaska.

He left without telling his family his plans, giving his money to charity and leaving his vehicle behind.  He hitchiked, kayaked and lived in the simplest terms trying to get to the basics in life.  What strikes me in his story are several key things.  First is that he lived for his dreams, without fear.  He had an idea of what he was trying to attain and he wasn’t scared to go for it.  In addition to that, everyone he came across loved him.  They talked about his sincerity and his good heart.  He made connections with many many people during his travels.

Throughout this book part of me was trying to figure out whether I was appalled by what he did (thinking of how it must have hurt his family) or whether it was something I admired….in moderation.  No matter what your reaction to his story, I think it would be hard to read about Christopher McCandless without having one.

Central to this story is the history and story of Mormonism.  I want to preface this by saying that Dan and Ron Lafferty were not Mormon.  They were a break away sect of fundamentalists.  In every religion their can be people who take things to an extreme and buck the values that are held by the mainstream faith.  I want to be clear that while the author tells of the history of the Mormon religion and key leaders in it, he does so to show the chain of how this fundamentalist group was developed and how they are able to justify the beliefs that they hold.

Among other principles, the main principle that this fundamentalist group was trying to bring back was that of polygamous marriage.  They claimed that as Joseph Smith took a revelation declaring it to be the holy way of live to take multiple wives, and it being something that the central Mormon church was not doing, they were trying to bring it back and live by it.  In this, there was also the principles of wives being quiet and submissive to their husbands.

Ron was the oldest of five brothers.  Ron’s wife and children eventually left him over the growing extremist views and abuse he was trying to enforce in his home.  After this all of the Lafferty boys began to get involved with the School of Prophets that studied the more fundamental beliefs and put a special focus on learning to receive revelations directly from God.  Allen, the youngest Lafferty boy, was not participating as actively due to his wife, Brenda’s, refusal to give in to it.

During this time Ron received a revelation that he believed to be from God that they needed to “eliminate” Brenda Lafferty and her baby as well as two others who had helped Ron’s wife when she was leaving him.  Ron shared it with the others in the School of Prophets and spoke about it openly in front of multiple people, including Allen, yet no one forewarned the potential victims or do anything other than protest that it was not a true revelation and it should not be acted on.  This gave Ron and Dan the chance to follow through with it months after he had received it.  Dan was the one who physically carried out the murders and in interviews he speaks of feeling overcome by a force he could not control and a complete calm with his actions because he believed to be following God’s orders.

This book delves deeply on how religion can create a certain atmosphere where things can be taken a different way.  Several sections of the book point out that their is a fine line between a revelation and a delusion.  “Whether a belief is considered to be a delusion or not depends partly upon the intensity with which it is defended, and partly upon the numbers of people subscribing to it.” (by Anthony Storr, Feet of Clay)  This story brought up examples of people who did take their religious beliefs to the extreme.  And those that suffer because of it.