Chasing Stolen Gold: How a Ten-Year Quest to Find Lost Gold Led to a Spiritual Awakening by Camp McKinney Jimmy is a memoir and a chronicle of the author's unique experiences in the wild as an amateur naturalist and a gold hunter. The author begins with a detailed account of his personal life as it pertains to prior relationships and their evolution, and how they factored into that particular point in his journey, the home that he occupied, and his expeditions into nature in search of wealth and fame. The book then backpedals into a fictional account of two 19th-century men, one named Mathew Roderick and the other named James Monaghan, whose stories intertwine with the author in profoundly unusual ways. As Camp McKinney Jimmy continues his treasure hunts, both his health and relationship suffered, but what might have felt like the end for others happened to be the beginning of something much more enlightening than he could have imagined.

Camp McKinney Jimmy provides an honest account of what he has experienced and its impact on him in Chasing Stolen Gold. It's a memoir with an interesting set of viewpoints and possibly the first I've read about a contemporary treasure hunter, but certainly the only one I've read where the spiritually transcendent quality of nature is explored as much as the areas he scoured looking for gold. The parts I found most interesting were the fictionally recreated backstory of Roderick and I do believe the writing elevates in this format. As for his entirely factual retelling, the narrative does get bogged down frequently by loquaciousness and more information than a reader would need. Still, what he describes when the pacing resumes at a faster pace is fascinating, and I was particularly delighted by the photographs that gave a much better understanding of the places he describes. There are two primary audiences that I believe will embrace this memoir. The first are those in the gold and treasure hunting communities who will likely appreciate the nod to a pursuit that they share with him. It may also get them to look beyond the ground at their feet and see more than soil concealing treasure. The second is the author's family, who will no doubt cherish this memoir as a treasure and as a time capsule of their collective history.