I’ve been following Brent Underwood’s adventure and progress at @GhostTownLiving (YouTube) since he bought Cerro Gordo in 2020 (and was lucky enough to visit the town in 2026)! This book wasn’t just a wonderful companion to all his videos; it’s also great as a stand-alone book, and is full of history, stories, and life-lessons learned either the hard way or through quiet reflection of both the Eastern Sierras and Death Valley.

Split into four parts—Earth, Water, Fire, and Air—Brent walks you through not only he hardships he has faced and lessons learned while bringing the Cerro Gordo ghost town back to life, but also simpler, deeper perspectives that are so easily lost in the consciences of the modern era: the value of working hard; of leaving space to breathe; finding appreciation in every situations, even the worst ones; the importance of being a part of something bigger than yourself.

Anyway. My attempts to describe this book aren’t the most eloquent; it means too much to me to condense it into a few paragraphs. All I can say is that it’s inspiring to see someone chase a dream with single-minded focus, to see them accomplish incredible things despite impossible odds, to watch them rise up to what seems to be an insurmountable task, and thrive. I mean this when I say that, through watching Brent’s channel and reading his book, my life was changed for the better. 💙

This book was first published in 1952, so a lot of the language used is outdated and the pacing/quality is a bit different than I’m used to. My rating is taking all of that into account.

It’s an interesting mystery: someone gets murdered in London, and the murderer sneaks their way into a group of vacationers headed to the Austrian slopes. I really liked how the POV would switch between the main party and the cops; with every new revelation in the case, I’d try to guess who in the party was actually the murderer.

One big drawback is that I felt there were either too many potential suspects for this short of a book (there were sixteen total, eight men and eight women), or we needed more time/pages to get to know all sixteen suspects. Each character came across as vaguely similar (with one or two exceptions), so all their personalities blended together and made it difficult to keep them all apart. Many could probably have been cut out entirety.

So in conclusion: it wasn’t bad at all, even if the sheer number of suspects made it confusing to follow, and the back-and-forth POVs between the cops & suspects was entertaining. I’d definitely recommend keeping notes while reading.