THE ADVENTUER'S SON. Roman Dial. William Morrow, 2020. Hardcover, 351 pages, $28.99.

In this heart-wrenching memoir, Roman Dial walks the reader through that most horrific of losses, the death of one’s child. On July 10, 2014, Cody Roman Dial began a risky and illegal crossing of Corcovado National Park in Costa Rica, a complex wilderness of trackless rainforest, its bewildering arroyos choked with fallen trees and tangled vines, each step bedeviled by the possibility of a deadly snakebite or a twisted ankle. Roman—he’d gone by his father’s name since age six, when the two had done a 60-mile crossing of Umnak in the Aleutian Islands—was in the middle of a months-long solo journey through Central and South America. Seasoned and mature at 27, he was well-equipped for the challenge. “He’d been raised on trips of independent discovery where we used our wits, knowledge, and experience to explore the natural world,” Dial writes of his family’s travels in Australia, Borneo, and Puerto Rico, as well as close to home in the Alaska wilderness. “It was good to see him continuing those kinds of adventures on his own.” 

On July 23, concerned that he hadn’t heard from his son, Dial reads his last email more thoroughly and discovers that Roman is now ten days overdue. He realizes in that instant that something is seriously amiss. “Shock washed over me,” Dial writes. “Then guilt. Guilt over the fact that...I hadn’t given him the attention he deserved...[and] spent too much time on my own trips, on my own interests.” He leaves the next day for Costa Rica and begins a two-year search for Roman, replete with numerous dashed hopes, corrupt and uncaring officials, a devious and manipulative TV producer, yet also many kind souls who help in ways large and small. In the end, a few days before the airing of the made-for-television reality show Missing Dial, which reached the conclusion that Roman had been murdered, Dial and his wife Peggy get word that human remains and camping gear had been found by a remote creek in Corcovado. Emailed photos confirm the dreadful news. Further investigation reveals that Roman had likely been bitten by a poisonous snake or crushed by a falling tree. “He had probably died before any of us knew he was in trouble,” Dial concludes. “Before I had even read his last words: ‘It should be difficult to get lost forever.’” 

Far more than just a grim chronicle of uncertainty and grief, though, The Adventurer’s Son is an honest and hopeful celebration of lives lived to the fullest, of the powerful experiences and connections that nature and adventure provide to Dial and his family. As a grad student at Stanford, he moves to Puerto Rico with Peggy and two young kids (Jasper, their daughter, is just a year old) to study “complex food webs in tropical rainforests,” the subject of his Ph.D. “Like every three-year-old, our boy asked a barrel of questions,” he recalls of their first jungle visits. “Why do lizards lose their tails? Why do birds sing? Why are flowers bright? I tried hard to nourish this insatiable curiosity on a trip that initiated our shared explorations across five continents and two decades.” Dial clearly has been successful in this quest, yet he is also brutally honest in revealing his own flaws. In particular he explores the tension between holding onto the child he nurtures and protects, and letting go of the adult Roman becomes as he discovers his place in the world. “For miles, we each stammered in frustration as emotion eclipsed logic,” Dial writes, describing an argument with his son during a scientific trip to Bhutan in 2012. “All fathers readily see their foibles reflected in their sons, and there, plain as day, were mine.” This reader is thankful for Dial’s willingness to share the unique joys and challenges of his life. You will be too. 

– Michael Kennedy