{"product_id":"up-on-cove-mountain-earl-swift-9798228975422","title":"Up on Cove Mountain: Adventure, Tragedy, and a Quest for Meaning on the Appalachian Trail","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor Earl Swift narrates his own powerful story.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eChesapeake Requiem\u003c\/i\u003e comes an intricately plotted tale of two end-to-end adventures through the Appalachian Trail's twenty-two hundred miles, braided around a third strand, that of the trail's most notorious tragedy that has haunted Earl Swift for thirty years.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn 1990, a youthful Earl Swift backpacked the Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia, a transformative experience that colored every aspect of his later life. He emerged from his hike across the rugged, sky-high roof of fourteen eastern states a sharper and more organized thinker, a better problem solver, and a committed outdoorsman.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut he also left the AT with baggage: Early in his odyssey, he spent time with a couple of other southbounders, who were friendly, capable, and doing everything right, but who were nonetheless murdered weeks later at a mountaintop campsite in Pennsylvania--a fit of violence that the killer never explained.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHalf a lifetime later, Swift returned to the trail to find out whether he was still, in his sixties, equal to the AT's roller-coaster terrain. Driving him, too, was a quest for answers that had nagged at him since that first hike: What had happened at that campsite to turn two smart, bighearted people into prey? Why had fate chosen them, when other hikers--Swift included--seemed more likely candidates? And how could such a grisly episode have unfolded in the backcountry's sylvan loveliness, not to mention one of the safest places around?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eUp on Cove Mountain\u003c\/i\u003e is the arresting account of Swift's 2024 trek through the AT's enduring wonders and the ghosts of its past, a chronicle of swashbuckling adventure coupled with a meditation on the nature of risk and the risks of nature.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Earl Swift\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9798228975422\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e HarperCollins\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 08\/18\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e CD","brand":"Earl Swift","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":48743180697855,"sku":"9798228975422","price":49.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/up-on-cove-mountain-earl-swift-9798228975422","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}