On a lonesome road in Utah, a young Nike Missile base technician returning from leave speeds through the desert night. Suddenly the sky lights up as a blazing object streaks across the highway and crashes nearby. Stunned, the soldier stops and decides to investigate. Little does he know, but his life will never be the same again. This is the true story of a man named Gerry Irwin. Following a mysterious experience in Utah in 1959, inexplicable blackouts and bizarre behavior threatened to derail his promising Army career. Then one day he suddenly deserted his Army post in Texas and disappeared without a trace. No one knows what became of him—until now. What happened to Gerry Irwin? Was he abducted by aliens, in what would amount to the first known case of this phenomenon on American soil? Or was he a pawn in a covert intelligence operation? And how does his story really end? A new investigation launched in 2013 attempts to answer these and other questions, revealing along the way the ordeal of a man whose mind was ravaged by a confrontation with the unknown. “What a terrific job of research. I get many books to read but not many grab me like this one did. It is a marvelously constructed story that comes to a shocking, sobering, and enlightening conclusion.” — Whitley Strieber, author of Communion "This book is a model of a competent UFO close encounter investigation. The military details and the potential relationship with MKUltra are fascinating. Was Gerry Irwin abducted? We don't know, but that would certainly explain the many confusing details. A very good read.” — Ron Westrum, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Eastern Michigan University "A very detailed investigation of a long-forgotten and neglected mysterious event which may shed light on UFO close encounters, but it is just as much the exploration of one man’s journey into the mists of memory and mind." — Mark Rodeghier, Center for UFO Studies