Reviewed by Anne Boiling for Readers' Favorite

In j guevara's spell-binding Himalayan adventure, The Keepers of Himal, Reid Fuhrman is no longer searching, chasing or wandering after someone else's truth. Content with life and the pursuit of nothing, he's had it with quests and causes. His solitude with Nature more than satisfied his obsession for futile pursuits. Life, however, thought otherwise.

Although Reid could not imagine more contentment than when listening to Nature's voice and trying to decipher her message, he soon learns that everything comes not to those who wait, but to those who are content, for listening is what he was doing when this odyssey began.

A chance meeting with a lost Stranger deep in the woods of Maine, rekindles his desire to explore. The Stranger, impressed with Reid's close kinship with Nature, reveals: "I have been to the Himalayas and have learned much from those who live there. I am going to tell you something I have never told another. Near a village called Dhungla there is a man you must meet. His name is Sunam. What he knows of the natural world, you cannot imagine. He can teach you those things you wish to learn. I know he would welcome you."

Torn between his desire and the conflicts of his past, Reid resists the temptation. But fate will not be denied. With nothing more than the name 'Sunam', and a village called 'Dhungla'—which turns out to be one of several by the same name—Reid, embarks on a quest in search of a man he only knows from a proxy introduction by a man he knows equally little about.

After an incredible adventure of trials and tribulations, from getting lost in a snowstorm at 14,000 feet, to nearly walking off a cliff , being held at gunpoint by a squad of the High Altitude Battalion of trained assassins, his head bashed, bounced out of two monasteries, and trekking across practically the entire Himalayan range, he finds his sage of Nature.

Sunam teaches Reid the ways of physical Nature, to the point where he finally deciphers that voice, Nature's message. With this breakthrough, The Keepers of Himal take Reid into the higher realms of Nature's creation, the nature of Nature itself, which Reid reveals in detail. Humanity is finally at the evolutionary threshold of self-awareness to self-realization, so we must now take responsibility for our own existence. What we do and the consequences are at the heart of this message. Listen, and then decide.

The Keepers of Himal, with its intriguing plot, is a well-written, entertaining, insightful, and often humorous Himalayan trek that explores not only Earth's tallest mountains, but also our relationship to Nature, to one another, and to the planet, the Orb, that gives us life. As I read, I found myself doubting this was fiction. The author’s epilogue leaves me wondering. This book has more than a little agenda. The author obviously cares much for nature, mankind, the planet and its plight. As the dedication indicates, To Man: the most intelligent, thus the most endangered.