In high school I pulled this book off the shelf and started reading. I couldn't put it down, checked it out, and finished it that evening at home. I came back and re-read it many times. Then our high school built a new library and the books were all moved. I couldn't even remember the title of the book, because I knew it only by its location on the shelf. I knew it had something to do with "Survive" or "survivor". but now, finally, I've found it! It's riveting, fascinating, unbelievable that it's a true story.

I, like another reviewer, had read this book when it first came out. I had bought the paperback sometime in the 70's and like the other reviewer read it from cover to cover in one sitting. Lauren's experience surviving the incredible hardships of the plane crash, dealing with her planemates fates and then her incredible journey down the mountain made me realize how strong-willed we humans can be when it comes down to the challenges she faced climbing down that sheer mountain with her injuries, hallucinations and no underpants! Since I lost the original paperback I owned,I ordered the book again last week (Nov. 2002); it arrived in the mail last night and once again riveted by Lauren's incredible experience read it through in one sitting! I only have two questions now..Now that Lauren is in her 50's like me, whatever happened to her? did she end up with her boyfriend Jim? Did she ever have any long-term problems with the crash? And alright, three questions, why hasn't anyone made a motion picture out of this incredible story?!!!

Lauren Elder, with the help of ghost writer Shirley Strashinsky, tells the story of a light plane crash in the Sierra Mountains in California.

Lauren is a likeable young woman, something of a Bohemian artist-type, who on a whim takes up an offer to be the third passenger on a little Cessna, making the trip from San Francisco to Death Valley. The pilot is confident and competent but has only some 300 flying hours -- he mistakes the pass through the Sierras and Lauren, sitting in the back seat and enjoying the view of mountains all round, turns forward to see a wall of granite moving towards them! When she wakes up, she finds they've crashed: the crumpled plane is lying on a precarious slope a few FEET away from the crest of the Sierras.

(The geography here is part of the drama because Mount Whitney, just a few miles from them, is the tallest mountain in the continental U.S., and the Owens Valley below, in turn, is a close and comparable neighbor to the lowest point, Death Valley. Lauren can see the Owens Valley from the crash site.)

One of her fellow passengers is severely injured; the pilot less severely so but seems nonetheless unwilling or unable to help. Lauren and he survive the severe cold that night by collecting gasoline from the leaking plane and pouring it in a thin steady stream onto a fire they're started with the plane's cigarette lighter.

She tells in first-person, frank and meticulous detail the events of that night, and of the next morning when she decides to hike/climb down from the mountain to the valley below, at one point having to lower herself down a dry waterfall, and having many visual hallucinations on the way because of lack of sleep and shock; and, finally, how she has trouble finding help when she walks late that night into the town of Independence! People see her disheveled appearance and are afraid -- this is the county seat where Charles Manson was put to trial, and where his female followers spent a lot of time hanging around the courthouse.

This may not be the most amazing story of survival extant -- I guess that's why the book is out of print -- but I couldn't put it down. I liked Lauren, and Shirley Strashinsky is a really excellent ghost writer: you feel that this is happening to you, and this makes the lessons in survival most memorable. I found myself saying, as Lauren does in many places, "We should have had a first aid kit -- I should have worn better shoes," etc. And thanking God that she had just happened to take, for instance, a good, warm cap that covered her ears.

Ironically, Lauren's father is an ex-Navy test pilot working for Northrop Aviation. Northrop sends one of their planes to search for her, piloted by a buddy of the father's who has logged more than a hundred times the hours that Lauren's friend had. Point made regarding light planes: don't travel very far in them unless the pilot has racked up thousands of miles.