"In Sundown Legends, Checchio offers up the American Southwest as a spiritual repository and source of inspiration. On his journey he talked to individuals whose imaginations have been shaped by the power of this desert landscape. Some of these people included Ken Sleight, the Utah wilderness outfitter who was the inspiration for the character "Seldom Seen Smith" in Edward Abbey's novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, and the novelist John Nichols, author of The Milagro Beanfield War, who wandered into Taos in the late sixties and found a place to make his stand. And Checchio followed the trail of the enigmatic teenager Everett Ruess, the boy who loved remote canyonlands and whose baffling disappearance gave birth to a thousand legends."--BOOK JACKET.