"There is nothing out there." Such is the claim, at least, of politicians and oil company executives, amazed that anyone would fight to protect the miles of plateaus and canyon bottoms that stretch across southern Utah. Even tourists see this region as an empty spot on the map--an excuse to drive directly from Capitol Reef to Arches National Park. But it is precisely this--nothing--that writer Brooke Williams and photographer Chris Noble find captivating about Escalante. In this thoughtful and exquisitely illustrated rumination, the authors tour the network of chasms and gorges that began...

It is Jay Bartlett's first day as an ambulance driver. Instead of simply delivering his patient to the hospital safely, he hits a pedestrian as they arrive. The victim, Jordan James, is just arriving at the hospital to tend to her husband, who has had a heart attack. Instead of keeping vigil by his side, she is thrown into a coma and her own medical emergency. In his guilt, Jay drops his own life and stays with Jordan. Their lives soon become intertwined both in the present as well as in the past as a story of love over time unfolds.

Open Midnight weaves two parallel stories about the great wilderness--Brooke Williams's year alone with his dog ground truthing wilderness maps of southern Utah, and that of his great-great-great-grandfather, who in 1863 made his way with a group of Mormons from England across the wilderness almost to Utah, dying a week short. The book is also about two levels of history--personal, as represented by William Williams, and collective, as represented by Charles Darwin, who lived in Shrewsbury, England, at about the same time as Williams.
As Brooke Williams begins researching the story...