"I [Lorna Craig] would say that teaching a girl that her salvation depends on her having sexual relations with a married man is inherently destructiv… - Jon Krakauer

It's not always necessary to be strong, but to feel strong.

"When Alex left for Alaska," Franz remembers, "I prayed. I asked God to keep his finger on the shoulder of that one; I told him that boy was special. But he let Alex die. So on December 26, when I learned what happened, I renounced the Lord. I withdrew my church membership and became an atheist. I decided I couldn't believe in a God who would let something that terrible happen to a boy like Alex. After I dropped off the hitchhikers," Franz continues," I turned my van around, drove back to the store, and bought a bottle of whiskey. And then I went out into the desert and drank it. I wasn't used to drinking, so it made me real sick. Hoped it'd kill me, but it didn't. Just made me real, real sick."

And although his perspective was absolutist and unyielding, it presented a kinder, gentler alternative to Calvinism, which had been the ecclesiastical status quo in the early years of the American republic.