Book excerpt: Silas Pearson is looking for answers. It's been more than three years since his wife, Penelope de Silva, disappeared while working on a conservation project in Utah's red rock wilderness. Law enforcement authorities have given up hope of finding the adventurous Penelope alive. And some suggest that she may not have vanished into the desert at all, but simply left Silas for another man. Silas moves to Moab, where his wife was last seen, with one purpose: finding his wife, dead or alive. His search takes him into a spectacular wilderness of red rock canyons, soaring mesas, and vertical earth, where he must confront his failures as a husband and his guilt over not being there when Penelope needed him most. The Slickrock Paradox is the first book in the Red Rock Canyon Mysteries, a series of books that explores an iconic American landscape through an atypical anti-hero who is deeply flawed, reluctant, and yet familiar.