On April 4, 2013, 47-year-old Christopher Thomas Knight was arrested during a break-in at a summer camp for the disabled in the woods of central Maine. What made that otherwise unremarkable apprehension of a petty thief extraordinary was the identity of the perpetrator--someone who had spent 27 years in those woods, intentionally cut off from any human contact. The Stranger in the Woods is journalist Michael Finkel's intimate account of Knight's long sojourn, one man's singular response when the tension of living in society became unbearable.
After Knight left his job installing home and vehicle alarm systems in 1986, he made his way to an area about 25 miles north of Augusta, where he settled for the duration of his time in the woods. He supported himself through periodic raids on the nearby camp and seasonally occupied cabins. One of the most striking aspects of Knight's isolation was the fact that his elaborate hiding place lay about a three-minute walk from the nearest cabin. And yet, in all those years, his only human encounter was a brief one with a passing hiker in the 1990s.
Finkel (True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa) adroitly connects Knight's story to accounts of other hermits. In the fast-moving 200 pages of The Stranger in the Woods, Finkel takes pains not to deify or demonize him. He does offer an undeniably sympathetic portrait of his subject, a "refugee from the human race." His account will appeal to readers who enjoy stories of encounters with both the natural world and the natures within. --Harvey Freedenberg, attorney and freelance reviewer