"The Old West is a mother lode of colorful nonfiction, truth often obscured by layers of myth. Reynolds taps a particularly rich vein of lore in his riveting recap of "what has become the greatest, most vexing, and persistent lost-mine tradition of North American history." The Lost Adams Diggings are named for John R. Adams, who, in 1864, escorted by "a half-breed Mexican-Indian with a crumpled ear," led an expedition of 21 miners that apparently found nuggets of placer gold somewhere in the remote Mogollon Breaks straddling the border of New Mexico and Arizona. Apache raiders slaughtered 19 of the miners, leaving only Adams and one other man to tell the tale. While (Reynolds) hasn't found the mother lode from which the placer deposits came, he's struck gold with his tale of "blood and guts, hope and hardship, dust and disappointment."