A memoir of wilderness, metaphysical transformation, ancestral immigration, and Charles Darwin.

Open Midnight weaves two parallel stories about the great wilderness—Brooke Williams’s year alone with his dog, ground truthing backcountry maps of southern Utah, and that of his great-great-great-grandfather, William Williams, who in 1863 made his way with a group of Mormons from England across the ocean and the American wild almost to Utah, dying a week short. The story follows two levels of history—personal, as represented by his forbear, and collective, as represented by Charles Darwin, who lived in Shrewsbury, England, at about the same time as William Williams.