Lost Canyon: A Novel

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Description

Four people on a backpacking trip in the Sierra Nevada find more adventure than they ever imagined . When they start up a pristine mountain trail that hasn't been travelled in years, all they have to guide them is a hand-drawn map of a mysterious place called Lost Canyon. At first, the route offers all the freedom and exhilaration they'd hoped for. But when they stumble onto someone who doesn't want to be found, the group finds itself faced with a series of dangerous conflicts, moral dilemmas, confrontations with nature and an all- out struggle for survival.

Reviews

In this heart-hammering literary thriller, four very different and dissatisfied Los Angeles denizens set out on a four-day backpacking trip in the Sierra Nevada, only to be confronted by a dangerous stranger.
--San Francisco Chronicle, Best of 2015: 100 Recommended Books

Revoyr expertly captures the calming effects of forest, creeks, looming canyon walls on city dwellers...Imagine Deliverance set on the contemporary West Coast.
--BBC, 2015's Best Beach Reads

[Revoyr's] novels defy easy classification: they are page-turners that plumb history, character studies fraught with suspense, hard-boiled visions rendered in warm tones. Fundamentally, they are generous ruminations on what it means to belong. And it's precisely this--the ability to write with lyricism and compassion about complex, often painful truths--that has made Revoyr one of the city's great storytellers.
--Los Angeles Review of Books, Interview with Nina Revoyr

What makes this latest from Revoyr (The Age of Dreaming) more than a suspenseful tale of survival and personal growth is the slowly worked out differences of race and class, well articulated throughout....An absorbing read with good social context.
--Library Journal

If you need an intense read to cap off your August, this is it....I can't say anymore without spoiling it, so I'll just say struggle, struggle, survival, more struggle, intense, intense, intense!
--Book Riot

Revoyr [is] one of LA's greatest contemporary novelists.
--KCET, LA Letters column

Four people from Los Angeles...embark on a backpacking excursion through the Sierra Nevada and encounter more than they had bargained for.
--Outlook Magazine

From the very first chapter, Revoyr delicately balances both character and plot, providing an in-depth look at each character's internal struggles and the external elements from which those conflicts arise.
--Hypertext Magazine

Gripping....Expect to grip the pages, hold your breath, and lose sleep as you move through to find out what their fate will be....[Revoyr] is a writer worth reading.
--WNC Woman Magazine

The picturesque forests of inland California are revealed to be harboring all kinds of dangerous secrets.
--MPR News

She writes about the city with compassion and a sharp eye for detail, paying attention to people and neighborhoods often left out of mainstream stories about L.A.
--The Rafu Shimpo

[Revoyr's] love for and detailed knowledge of the natural beauty of the canyons and mountains shines through Lost Canyon: the flowers, scents and vistas that Gwen, Oscar and Todd encounter bring moments of healing each had hoped to experience on this trip. In depicting the backpackers working together for survival, Revoyr may also be dramatizing the idea that focusing together on shared dangers is one way to break out of straitjackets of racial and ethnic assumptions.
--Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

In a former Wisconsinite's novel, three Angelenos on a backpacking trip through the Sierra Nevada mountains find both natural beauty and human evil.
--Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, A Recap of the 101 Books I Read in 2015

The book's biggest strength is the way in which Revoyr is able to portray the wilderness as both idyllic and dangerous. The characters struggle even before things take a frightening turn, but they also take great comfort in the natural world. And as their situation begins to look truly grim, the beauty of nature still offers a balm.
--The Gazette

Three Angelenos join their mutual physical trainer for a backpacking trip through the Sierra Nevada mountains, expecting (and privately fearing) to be pushed past their self-perceived limits. With hiking poles and bear spray, they've prepared for uncertain slopes and wildlife, but not for the least predictable of dangerous animals--man.
--The Pueblo Chieftain

Lost Canyon exquisitely describes the California mountain wilderness, shows the reader the world through the eyes of people very different from one's self and wraps it up in a tidy thriller bow. Highly recommended!
--Sonoma Valley Sun

What starts out as a physical challenge quickly takes a turn for the worse when the group runs into a man who doesn't want to be discovered. Things rapidly go south, shots are fired, lives are threatened, and the struggle for survival becomes a very real thing that has more to do with courage than with endurance or physical fitness.
--Boswell Book Company, Staff pick

Revoyr does an excellent job of drawing the characters for the reader so that by the time the plot takes over the reader's attention, the reader feels as though s/he knows the characters, and perhaps more importantly, care about them.
--Beagle and Wolf Bookstore, Staff pick

Fans of Revoyr will appreciate her keen and meticulous eye toward the depiction of the mountainous landscapes and topographical features; this skill has been especially evident throughout her oeuvre, especially in her ability to render space in its myriad forms and scales (the city, farmland, etc) with such wonderful and rich detail. Perhaps, the greatest achievement in this novel is the realistic transformations that each character undergoes due to the traumatic and pivotal events that occur.
--Asian American Literature Fans

An exciting page-turner....Revoyr's beautiful descriptions of the Sierras almost makes me want to go there. She also captures the essence of Los Angeles and its diversity. I finished the book in a day and loved it.
--The Cat Overlord Book Club (UCLA)

Four backpackers of racially and ethnically diverse backgrounds set off into the Sierras in this unusual adventure thriller, only to find that the dangers of American society have followed them there.
--World Wide Work Newsletter

In this gripping odyssey a breathtaking adventure goes terribly wrong....Expertly written. Revoyr is a classicist and she offers a trove of pointers for the wannabe writer.
--Kaieteur News (Guyana)

With ripped-from-the-headlines action and character backstories that relate to real-life issues like the foreclosure crisis and the plight of students at inner-city schools, Revoyr has crafted an absorbing, thought-proving read.
--Books & Whatnot

Four unlikely Angelenos on a backpacking trip in the High Sierra discover that the perils of contemporary life don't stop at the trailhead. Rarely have the glories and hardship of backcountry travel, and the grandeur of this landscape, been so effectively portrayed. Revoyr strikes gold with this unexpected, fast-moving tale of high-altitude danger.
--Janet Fitch, author of Paint It Black

Four urbanites from Los Angeles embark on an uncharted trail, invoking shadows of Deliverance in this fast-paced story which celebrates the mountain world of rock, sky, and woods. Nina Revoyr's wilderness thriller leaves readers as breathless as the hikers.
--Ron Carlson, author of The Signal

Nobody knows Los Angeles like Nina Revoyr! Sharp-witted and big-hearted, Lost Canyon shows us what happens when the melting pot boils over. If you're brave enough to handle the truth about American race relations, this is the book for you.
--Tayari Jones, author of Silver Sparrow

Praise for Wingshooters:

A searing, anguished novel....The narration and pace are expertly calibrated.
--Los Angeles Times

Hauntingly provocative...an excellent choice for book discussion groups.
--Library Journal

Author Bio

Nina Revoyr is the author of four previous novels, including The Age of Dreaming, which was nominated for the LA Times Book Prize; Southland, a Los Angeles Times best seller and Best Book of 2003; and Wingshooters, which won an Indie Booksellers' Choice Award and was selected by O, The Oprah Magazine as one of 10 Titles to Pick Up Now. Revoyr lives and works in Los Angeles. Lost Canyon is her latest novel.