All the Wrong Places

A Life Lost and Found

By: Phillip Connors

Narrated by: Adam Verner

Philip Connors' Fire Season, an account of the decade he spent working in a fire-lookout tower high above the remotest part of New Mexico, won the Banff Mountain Book Grand Prize and the Reading the West Book Award, and Amazon named it the Best Nature Book of the Year. Now Connors returns with the story of what drove him up to the tower in the first place: the wilderness years he spent reeling in the wake of a family tragedy. This is an unforgettable account of grappling with a shattered sense of purpose, from his family's failing pig farm in Minnesota to a crack-addled Brooklyn neighborhood to the mountains of New Mexico, where he puts the pieces of his life back together. Like Cheryl Strayed's Wild, this is a finely wrought look back at wayward youth - and a redemptive story about discovering one’s place in the world.

©2015 Published by arrangement with W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. (P)2015 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Critic reviews

"The story of All the Wrong Places is a moving one, but it's Connors' artistry that makes it transcendent." (Sam Lipsyte, author of The Ask)

Search 4 Sense n Bro's Suicide--Moving Memoir

A poignant memoir of author's search for the sense of his brother's suicide. If there's a better description of the grief suffered, of the need to understand, of the empty place in the soul that one tries to, but can never, fill after the loss of a family member to suicide, I'm not sure I want to read it.

Mr. Connors provides a vivid and moving account of how he could not move past his younger brother's suicide until he had followed all traces of the moments and days leading up to the gunshot wound to the temple, until he spoke to others who had talked to his brother, before he could track down photos and an autopsy report. In short, the author had to satisfy himself that there were some things he would not know, could not know. When he came to grips with this fact and to a peace within, he was finally (but not fully) freed of the constant thoughts, guilt and the feelings of emptiness within himself.

The things Connors did, the places he worked and the people he met, all on his journey to peace and self-revelation, add up to make this a memoir a rewarding read/listen.

The narrator did an admirable job.

Well written

While I found this book searching for a book about through hiking the PCT, it wasn't what I expected. I listened anyway. The story is great, focusing on the author's brother. If you have ever had to deal with suicide, this book provides some solace and insight.

Courage to love

A touching story of true unconditional love and the courage to express that love. Thank you Phillip for giving me a life changing gift! I love you .

Funny, Sad, Real

In sharing intimate details of his life during the years following his brother's suicide, the author illuminates larger truths that are alternately profound, funny, intense, and embarrassing. I'm changed after listening. When this book first came out, I couldn't believe the timing; i'd just lost my own younger brother to suicide by gunshot in NM. But it took me going-on 10 years to finally feel up to listening. Some portions of the author's experience feel unbelievably familiar while others are just the opposite. It's the rawness of the telling that makes this book so special to me. Thank you.

Searching for Home when Out Past the Edges

Like listening to an old friend's personal life story about loss with intense honesty and transparency, while in the confidential privacy of a fire watch tower.