Michael "Hitch" Crocker came home from Vietnam in March 1968 a broken and angry man burdened by a terrible guilt. He no longer fit into the world where he had grown up. A week after coming home, he left his mother and adoring younger brother to hike the Appalachian Trail to walk off the war and regain his sanity. They never heard from him again.
Until today.
Fifty years after his big brother disappeared, Benjamin "Boo" Crocker receives a letter in the mail with a package containing Hitch's war medals and his journal from his time on the trail. For five decades Boo suffered the mysterious loss of his older brother. Over time his confusion at Hitch's disappearance gave way to fear, anger, and even hate. Then, eventually, acceptance that he would never know what happened to his brother.
Now he holds Hitch's journal in his hand. He sits down to read it.
This is Hitch's story - a unique and powerful tale of a man torn apart by the tragedy of the war in Vietnam and his impossible struggle to put the pieces of his spirit back together in the wilderness that is the Appalachian Trail.