Pledge to the Wind, the Legend of Everett Ruess

The Legend of Everett Ruess follows the adventures of the young vagabond as he roamed the southwest in the early thirties.

In this compelling narrative, Robert Louis DeMayo has taken journal excerpts, poems, and letters Everett sent to family and friends and turned them into historical fiction. Through this recreation of Everett's travels, we are given rare glimpses of the young artist as he traveled the southwest-much of which was still an unexplored wilderness in the 1930s. Everett traveled alone, accompanied only by a dog named Curly, but he often stayed with Navajo or Hopi. Using only burros or horses Everett explored much of Utah and Arizona, covering about twenty miles a day. He crossed the Grand Canyon regularly. The Navajo and Hopi that came across him miles from any road thought he was a mystic and called him Picture Man. They allowed him to witness-and participate in-ceremonies that today are mostly off-limits to non-Indians.

His letters about these experiences, flushed out in this story, show just how unique his time in the southwest was. In his last letter to his brother, Waldo, he wrote, "As to when I shall visit civilization, it will not be soon, I think. I have not tired of the wilderness; rather I enjoy its beauty and the vagrant life I lead more keenly all the time."


Author: Robert Louis Demayo
Publisher: Wayward Publishing
Published: 12/10/2014
Pages: 322
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.67d
ISBN: 9780991118311

About the Author
Robert Louis DeMayo took up writing at the age of twenty when he left his job as a biomedical engineer to explore the world. Over the coming years he traveled to every corner of the globe, experiencing approximately one hundred countries. He is a member of The Explorers Club and The Archaeological Institute of America. During his travels he worked extensively for the travel section of The Telegraph, out of Hudson, NH. For three years he worked as marketing director for Eos, a company that served as a travel office for six non-profit organizations and offered dives to the Titanic and the Bismarck, Antarctic voyages, African safaris and archaeological tours throughout the world. Following this, Robert worked for three years as a tour guide in Alaska and the Yukon during the summers, and as a jeep guide in Sedona, Arizona, during the winter. He was general manager at A Day in the West, a Jeep tour company in Sedona before he decided to write full time. He is the author of five novels: The Making of Theodore Roosevelt, The Light Behind Blue Circles, The Wayward Traveler, The Road to Sedona, and Pledge to the Wind, the Legend of Everett Ruess. His novel, The Wayward Traveler, won a Pinnacle Book Achievement Award. This memoir-based story follows, Louis, a young adventurer, who runs out of money while abroad and creates a list of Rules for Survival to get by. His most recent novel, Pledge to the Wind, the Legend of Everett Ruess, is a historical fiction account of the young man's exploration of the southwest between 1931 and 1935. Currently he resides in Hollis, N.H. and Sedona, AZ, with his wife Diana and three daughters: Tavish Lee, Saydrin Scout, and Martika Louise.

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