Pure Land Reading

Join Backpacker magazine Southwest Editor Annette McGivney for a discussion of her award-winning new book.

Pure Land is the story of the most brutal murder in the history of the Grand Canyon and how Annette McGivney’s quest to investigate the victim’s life and death wound up guiding the author through her own life-threatening crisis. On this journey stretching from the southern tip of Japan to the bottom of Grand Canyon, and into the ugliest aspects of human behavior, Pure Land offers proof of the healing power of nature and of the resiliency of the human spirit.

Part true crime and part memoir, Pure Land was the first selection of Outside magazine’s new online book club and won the “Excellence in Storytelling Award” from Coconino Center for the Arts.